The Art of Losing
by sunflower-queen
Summary: Bella is not quite as quick to accept Edward at the end of New Moon.
1. Awakening

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

So many things seem filled with the intent

To be lost that their loss is no disaster…

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

The art of losing's not too hard to master

Though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

~One Art, Elizabeth Bishop

--

Bright pulsing lights and colours surrounded me. I was utterly calm, utterly at peace, serene in the surreal environment. I knew precisely where I was. There was only one place in the entire world that'd allow me to feel this happy. I was with Edward.

I smiled, feeling rays of sunlight touch my face, and slowly opened my eyes to greet him. His name escaped from my lips in a whisper, like a prayer. He stood in front of me, his eyes bright, his face gentle as he looked at me. He took me in his arms.

In my eagerness to embrace him I stretched a little too far and my cheek bumped against something hard and cold. The unexpected sensation cleared some of the euphoric fog from my brain and I was suddenly afraid. I was beginning to understand that I was dreaming, that the beautiful vision wasn't real, could never be real.

Desperately I pushed myself forward, trying to capture his lips with mine, to leach every drop of sweetness from this unconscious appearance before reality interrupted.

Two dark shapes appeared at his side. I gasped and my struggle to reach him intensified a thousand-fold. I'd been too late, I hadn't been able to stop the Volturi, and my only love was about to be reduced to a pile of ash before my very eyes...

Something brushed my forehead, and my eyelids cracked open. I needed a few seconds to adjust to the bright light flooding my room. I blinked a few times, and immediately my spine dissolved into relaxation as I recognized the vision in front of me. Obviously the sheer force of my terror had forced the dream-come-nightmare to reinvent itself. I was back where I wanted to be most of all – in Edward's loving embrace, alone.

"Good morning, beautiful," he said softly, pressing his cold lips against my cheek. A blissful smile spread itself across my face as I revelled in the ridiculously real sensations coursing through me.

"Not quite, but I'm not complaining," I mumbled, reaching my arms around his neck, intent on capturing his lips with mine. After all, I had mere moments before the shrillness of my alarm clock or a croaking crow jolted me from my slumber, and when you wake up to a dream, you don't worry about things like morning breath.

Two cold hands formed gentle shackles around my wrists. "Wait," he whispered, and my eyes flew open.

My fantasies, my dream Edwards never wanted to wait. It was the one part of him that my subconscious refused to replicate exactly – his reluctance, his famous self-control, back in the days when he actually wanted me…

A jolt of pain ran through me, and with that, suddenly I was wide awake. The events of the past three days flew through my mind on a movie reel. My spine flew upwards, propelling me to sit upright in bed. The Volturi – I'd stopped the nightmare after all.

And Edward – Edward. Edward was lying right beside me, his body mirroring mine, his shirt wrinkled from where my fingers had clutched it all night.

"Edward! I… I'm sorry," I gasped, swinging both legs onto the floor, desperate to put some distance between us.

It was absolutely clear to me what must have happened. As he delivered me back to Charlie, I'd fallen asleep in his arms and he'd been too much of a gentleman to disturb my slumber by leaving.

He had half-risen from his prone position, his hair rumpled, his eyes confused. "Bella, what…?"

At this point I was kneeling before my wardrobe, frantically digging for something to throw on over the flimsy shirt I'd fallen asleep in. The fact that my love for Edward burned eternally within me meant nothing at that precise moment – all I wanted to do was to cover of much as my skin as possible so that I wouldn't make him uncomfortable – so that he wouldn't feel compelled to reiterate those awful words from that day in the woods – so I could place a barrier, however fragile, between him and the wound in my chest that throbbed every time he looked at me.

I finally found a tattered old sweatshirt and pulled it on over my head, rising as I did so. A ridiculous move, even by my standards – the sudden motion combined with the tangle I'd gotten my arms into meant that my feet automatically went into spasm and I felt myself heading towards the floor.

A pair of strong arms caught me, held me upright, and worked to release my head and arms from the knot of the sweater. I emerged, panting and blushing, to find him beaming down on me, his hands on the tops of my arms, his eyes full of mirth.

"Bella, what are you doing? Surely you should know by now that sudden motion is not your friend, particularly this early in the morning." His voice was playful. I could only stare at him.

The monster in my head subsided. I felt whole in his arms, cured, like every piece of me had knit back together.

Swallowing, I forced myself to stand independently, ignoring the agonising pains – actual, visceral pains – in my heart. What good was it to taunt myself with what had been, what could never be again? Even by my masochistic standards, lulling my bruised heart and cracked soul into a false sense of security was pure madness. It would only hurt that much more when he left.

No matter how desperately I wanted to believe otherwise, no matter how adept I was at pretending that the light in his eyes was something deeper than affection, something more powerful than simple amusement, things were different now.

He'd come to his senses – he'd realised my limitations, my flaws, my stupidity. Truly, I'd been expecting it from the first moment he told me he cared for me. It was nothing more than I deserved, for believing that out of all the people in the world, I was the outrageously lucky woman whom he would love forever.

I looked back up, seemingly unable to help myself, and my eyes met his.

He was thirsty, that much was obvious – his eyes were two flat onyx crystals staring back at me. How, then, was my ridiculous imagination still able to spark feeling into their depths – still able to see love, adoration even, in them when there was none?

His arms had crept around my waist. He pulled me to him in a grip to hard it was almost painful, then released me, holding me gently by my upper arms as he stared into my face. My eyes closed of their own accord as the scent of him washed over me. His proximity made me dizzy.

Lips smooth as glass and softer than petals brushed over my forehead, blessing each eyelid and the tip of my nose with a kiss. They travelled languorously down my cheek to the very edge of my lips, planting tiny butterfly kisses as they went. There they paused, and I could feel him hesitating, gauging my reaction.

There was no impending doom to distract me now. All I could think about was his lips on my skin. How gentle they were. How much I had missed them. How I would do anything to keep them there, for eternity.

How he had left. How he had promised to never come back.

How he would leave again.

Pain rippled through me, breaking me out of the drunken stupor his actions had inspired. He was frozen in place, staring down at me. Still the gentleman, expressing his gratitude and yet making sure not to go too far - making sure that I didn't read too much into his actions.

I pushed myself violently away from him. The motion was so sudden that it actually seemed to take him by surprise. His arms dropped their hold on my arms and we were completely separated once more.

"Please don't touch me," I whispered. "I can't bear it when you touch me." I kept my eyes closed. It was the only way for me not to break down and fly back into his arms for however long he was willing to keep me there.

"Bella?" My name on his lips was a question. How was it that he was able to saturate those two syllables with so much emotion? Guilt, surprise, panic, something else that I refused to hear, refused to accept...

My eyes cracked open, but I refused to look at him, studying instead the intricately patterned wallpaper of my room.

"Why are you still here?" I asked, trying my hardest to keep any and all emotion out of my voice. It seemed to work – I heard his quick, surprised inhale, could imagine his eyes widening in shock at my tone.

His hand came up as if to cup my cheek. I flinched, and it hovered in midair for a few seconds before dropping back down to rest by his side again.

"I wanted to be near you," he whispered, his voice saturated with guilt, with longing, with... no, I couldn't think it, couldn't allow myself to think it. "I wanted to make sure you were all right."

I nodded once, brusquely. "I am."

A pause. "I see that." He was being careful with me, trying not to arouse my volatile emotions, obviously. My eyes ached, and I blinked hard. It was so difficult to remain remote when everything I'd ever wanted was a hair's breadth away.

"You broke your promise," I accused him. My lips formed a hard line, my eyes dancing somewhere between the wallpaper and his left shoulder.

"Which one?" was his quiet reply, and I could hear the volumes of pain that waited behind that simple statement.

I closed my eyes once more and squeezed the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger.

No time to be melodramatic. No time to be selfish. I had to ensure this, at the very least. When I died, whatever the cause, be it natural or supernatural, I wanted to be able to assure myself that somewhere in the world, the Edward that I loved was happy. I would love him for as long as he existed, and probably after. I wanted to grant him his final wish – a life without me, unfettered by any and all mortal restraints. I wanted to set him free.

"Edward. This can't go on. You can't take responsibility for the things that happen to me here. You can't just go running off to Italy every time I trip and a surge of guilt strikes you because you weren't here to catch me. You know as well as I do that I'm ridiculously clumsy. You can't allow this overblown sense of responsibility to kick in every time something bad happens to me."

I bit my lip, well aware that I was babbling on nonsensically, desperate to get the painful words over and done with. He already owned my heart, my soul – this was the last gift I could give him.

He was looking at me in the strangest of ways. He almost looked angry.

"Responsibility?" he whispered. "That's why you think I asked the Volturi to kill me? Because I felt responsible?"

Why did he have to sound so tortured? Didn't he know how this was tearing me up?

I glared at him. "Didn't you?"

"Feel responsible? Intensely so."

"But that wasn't the reason you went to Italy."

He shook his head.

"Then what the hell was, Edward?" I demanded, crossing my arms across my chest. "Are you being deliberately difficult? If the guilt wasn't why you wanted to die, then what was it?"

His lips parted, and he looked as though he were struggling to clear some blockage in his throat.

"Bella. You seem to be labouring under a misapprehension. I thought I'd explained this to you." He exhaled, and I saw a tremor run through his body – exactly as if he were steeling himself not to touch me.

I waited.

"Bella," he murmured, his voice as smooth and seductive as ever, "even if I'd had no hand in your death - even if it wasn't my fault, I would have gone to Italy. Don't you understand? I can't live in a world where you don't exist. Bella... I love you so much. There is nothing for me here without you. There is no me without you." He exhaled sharply, his eyes burning into mine.

My mouth opened, but no words came out for several minutes. Finally, my whirling thoughts cleared.

"I don't believe you," I said blankly. "Is this stupid guilt complex of yours really so powerful as to make you think that that's what I want to hear? That if you pretend to love me for a few months it'll make everything go away?" I was growing angry now, my voice increasing in volume. "Don't you know how much it hurts to hear that? How much I want to believe you? Why would you want to do this to me all over again?"

He ran a hand through his hair, his expression full of pain. "Bella, I don't know what I can do to make you understand. You are everything to me."

I shook my head, covering my ears with my hands. "Stop it!"

He ignored me, pulling my hands away, pulling me into his arms, overlooking my attempts to escape.

"I love every tiny thing about you. Everything you've ever said, everything you've ever done. All the things that make you so utterly human, your spirit, your passion, your capacity to love, your bravery... "

Two cold fingers caught my chin and pushed it irresistibly upwards. Without my knowledge or permission, my eyes met his.

I was definitely not imagining it. It wasn't just that the flat blackness of his eyes had been transformed. It wasn't just that they burned with unparalleled ferocity into my own. It wasn't that his gaze held such volumes of emotion that I could feel my heart tremble within me.

His whole face was utterly aglow, as if somebody had trained the most heavenly of spotlights upon it. Every feeling he had ever had towards me was beaming out of his very skin. His forehead told of my stubbornness, his corresponding despair – the furrow between his eyes told me of his frustration at my inaccessible, incomprehensible mind - his mouth held tenderness for mine, longed to be connected once more, longed to convince me, in a thousand tiny ways, of his feelings.

I couldn't speak. Once more, I was overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of his face, by the countless ways in which he expressed his emotion, by the utter and infallible truth of it.

"But you said... you said..." I stammered, finally, stupidly.

"I know what I said." He sighed and for the first time I saw a twinge of pain alight upon his perfect features. "I even know why I said it. But that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't true."

I could only look at him.

"I'm so sorry, Bella," he whispered, his voice full of pain. "I'm a good liar – I have to be. All I wanted was to keep you safe."

All those months of agony, of utter torture, all the feelings my weak soul had had to experience, the sheer effort it had taken me to hold my sanity together, the cost to my friends, my family...

Something snapped inside me.

"Are you freaking KIDDING me??" I screamed into his face, not caring when he flinched, not caring that Charlie might overhear, not caring about anything but the multiple new wounds that had opened around the main one in my soul. "Are you KIDDING me? You left me – you put me through almost a year of complete and total mind-numbing agony for some stupid, testosterone-fuelled reason? How was THAT keeping me safe??"

His lips formed a hard line and he shook his head. "I know."

My hand reacted all by itself. It jerked up, and I watched in silent horror as it slapped him hard across the face. I did not register the pain that shot through my nerve endings. My whole body *was* a nerve ending. Raw. In pain. Angry. I slapped him again.

Somewhere inside of me Sensible Bella was watching all of this, shocked and mortified by this complete loss of self-control, but the red haze that had descended over me was making it impossible for me to listen to her.

I pummelled his stone chest with both of my fists, fevered now, not caring that it was hurting me like it could never hurt him, not caring that his hands had formed gentle but restraining manacles around mine, refusing to acknowledge him as he tried to calm me down.

"You stupid, stupid... how could you.... how dare you... I can't believe..." Hot tears cascaded down my cheeks – the last year's worth of frustration and loneliness making its way slowly out of my body.

His voice was agonised as he tried to console me. "Bella... Bella, love, please listen to me."

I shook my head viciously, refusing to allow the word. "Don't you dare call me 'love'," I spat, watching him recoil. "You don't know the meaning of the word, you.... you stupid, arrogant, patronising jerk, you..."

I ran out of air. My knees buckled, my body jack-knifing as I fell to the ground. Silently he moved away from me as I sobbed, giving me space, letting me breathe. My chest heaved as I tried to suck in oxygen from the air around me. Surely I would break apart; surely the force of this was more than my body could bear.

"Edward," I gasped, "Edward, look what you've done to me. How can this ever have been for the best?"

I could have been there for seconds or for hours. I honestly didn't know. My body locked down and all I could feel was a mind-boggling vortex of pain, sucking me in, whirling me around so that nothing made sense anymore.

I was right about one thing, though. My body was not strong enough to deal with that kind of anguish. It reacted by sending wave after wave of fatigue over my muscles, calming me through sheer exhaustion. Slowly my sobs lessened in volume, slowly I learned to breathe again. Finally I felt able to look up, to seek him out.

He was standing in the furthest corner of my room, an inhumanely perfect statue. His eyes were closed, but he looked anything but peaceful. His hands were in fists at his sides, his lips were compressed and he seemed to be fighting some instinctive urge. His whole body was a paroxysm of pain.

I gasped and wheezed. It was too much. All of it was too much. I couldn't handle his pain as well as my own. My senses were in utter overload. Hours, days before I'd been willing to sacrifice my own life to ensure his survival, and here I was, complicating his life yet again.

I felt like a parasite, like a festering wound on his otherwise perfect skin. I was nothing, and he was everything, and whatever selfish hurt he was feeling resonated within me, made me want to forget everything and pull him into my arms. I was tormented and anguished and most of all, I was blisteringly angry. And I didn't want him there witnessing my weakness any longer.

I climbed to my feet slowly, my knees shaking. His eyes opened and I could feel them leaving trails of liquid fire across my face. I refused to look at him, refused to acknowledge him. Refused.

Stumbling to the window, I unlatched it, then pushed it out as far as I could go. I turned to the wall. I couldn't do this if I looked at him.

"Get out." My voice was the barest of whispers, but he heard it.

I did not move until I'd felt the cool wind of his departure brush my skin. Keeping my eyes closed, I reached out and found the window once more. I locked it tightly and promptly collapsed on my bed to welcome the merciful release of sleep.

--


	2. Seeing Through You

I can't forgive you. Even if I could,

You wouldn't pardon me for seeing through you.

And yet I cannot cure myself of love

For what I thought you were before I knew you.

~ Defining the Problem – Wendy Cope.

--

My awakening, this time, was much more lucid. In the fraction of a second before my eyes cracked open, my brain had replayed a reel of images from the night before behind my eyelids. I did not gain even a moment's blissful ease from the weight on my chest. I was absolutely aware.

My hands fumbled, trying to find my bedside lamp. In doing so, they brushed against my pillow, and something abruptly bit my fingers with sudden, unexpected pain.

I blinked my bleary eyes and focused. There, sitting on the pillow, right beside my head, was a single, ruby red rose. The note attached read simply "Forgive me."

I swallowed.

I wanted to cry again. I wanted to bolt downstairs, through the woods, to his house. I wanted to throw myself into his arms and never leave. I wanted to...

No.

No, this could not continue. This was not acceptable.

My jaw locked in place and I squeezed my eyes shut.

I had spent the last eight months getting used to my new reality. I had fit myself back together, piece by painful piece, to resemble the girl I once was. And I had so nearly done it. I was so close. I would not let him rip me apart for his own perverse pleasure again.

I wanted – I needed to be angry with him.

Anger was all that was safe, all that was acceptable. Anger was a familiar emotion. It could only go so far. It was not like the aching love or depthless pain inside me. It had its limits. Now I clung to it like a lifeline.

All the more confusing feelings, the weak, pathetic impulses that flooded through my veins at the sight of his romantic gesture... I rounded them all up mercilessly and locked them tightly away, into the smallest metaphorical box I could find. And then I threw away the key.

Intellectually, I knew that it was hardly the most mature way to deal with my situation, but I refused to consider that. This wasn't about maturity. This was about survival. And if I let myself hope, if I let myself dream or plan or be happy – all of those roads led to pain.

I steeled my muscles and forced myself out of bed, dressing hurriedly and wrapping my hair in a scraggy bun at the base of my neck. If I was going to do this, I needed a distraction. And I knew just where to find it.

--

Three hours later, I surveyed Charlie's house in grim satisfaction. Obviously the man himself had been considerate of my need for sleep and resisted the urge to bawl me out until he actually saw me later that day, because he had left for work without disturbing me.

In his absence, I scrubbed every surface in the place till it begged for mercy. I took bleak satisfaction in wielding my container of bleach to nuke every surface in the bathroom and around the kitchen sink. I vacuumed. I dusted. I washed. I scrubbed

My muscles were yelling in protest and I imagined the house had a slightly dazed air to it as the wind of my passage screamed through it, but it had worked. Concentrating all of my attention on the dull work had successfully eliminated all untoward thoughts from my head.

And I was thoroughly pissed off. That was also a plus.

My ears pricked up as I detected a slowing-down in the spin cycle of the washing machine. Excellent. I had timed my chores well. The clothes were ready to be hung out to dry just as I thought I was finished.

I grabbed a large basket and a bag of pegs and transferred the wet clothes into it. Heading outside, I scowled at the buttery sunshine making an all-too-rare appearance, heading straight for the clothes line in Charlie's backyard.

I had been doing so well. So understandably I was annoyed to suddenly feel his eyes on me.

I kept my eyes on the shirt I was hanging, determinedly not looking at him. No moving air had announced his arrival, no animals had stirred with his coming – no markers to alert me that he was there, and yet I knew he was.

His musical voice drifted quietly across the space between us. "Bella."

I kept my eyes on my task, blessing the fact that the clothes pegs were not plain wood, but gaudy colours – iridescent pinks and blues and greens and yellows. It was another thing to distract me. I made sure that only one colour adorned each garment on turn, hanging up one of Charlie's shirts with green pegs, moving on to pin a pair of jeans to the line with pink ones.

My hand moved to the basket to retrieve the next article of clothing, and encountered something hard and cold.

My cheeks flamed and I jerked my hand back as if I'd received a violent electric shock.

"Don't," I bit out, irritated beyond rationality at his audacity. I refused to look at him, knowing that the sight of his angel's skin sparkling in the sun would completely undermine my careful precautions. I refused to hear his pained swallow, refused to register the trails of fire that his eyes were leaving on my skin. Refused.

"Please tell me what to do," he whispered, and the sound was so painful that it nearly made me crumble. "Please tell me how to make this right. I'll do anything."

My brain shut down at the note in his voice. I could almost see it happening. My frazzled neurons could not handle the words, the associated feelings they dredged up. So they didn't.

I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing how badly I wanted to believe, how deeply I still loved him, how easy it would have been for me to fall into his arms and never resurface. I was angry, I reminded myself. Angry, goddammit!

I thought about the sacrifice he'd forced me to make. The steps he'd taken to break me, piece by piece, all the while sanctimoniously claiming that it was for my own good. The lies. The pain.

It worked.

"There's nothing you can do." I bit the words out and abruptly closed my mouth. The anger bubbled inside me, dying to be released and strip me of whatever dignity I had left. I gritted my teeth against it, focusing once more at the task at hand.

For a while I pegged in silence. A breeze picked up and blew tendrils of hair across my eyes. The sun was warm on my arms, my neck. It was almost tranquil. It would have been, if a pair of anguished vampire eyes had not been boring themselves into my back.

When his voice came, it was full of so much pain that it flickered, in and out, like the sound on an old transistor radio. If I had let it, that alone would have undone me, made me weep, made me want to hold him forever. But I had found my detachment now and I clung to it with all the strength I possessed.

"Do you remember..." his voice broke off. He stopped, swallowed and started again. "Do you remember getting that volume of the works of Shakespeare, that day in Port Angeles?"

I frowned. I did not want to remember that day. I did not want to think of my excitement, his amusement. I did not want to think of how he had driven me to the meadow later and read out loud to me.

I did not want to remember his voice pacing the iambic pentameter exactly, the words rolling towards me precisely as they'd been meant to, his head bowed low and his eyes very serious as he vowed his love, over and over, through Shakespeare's verses.

I stayed silent. I wasn't sure what would have come out of my mouth in that moment had I tried to speak. But that was a mistake too, as he took my stillness for acquiescence.

He came over so that he was standing directly in front of me. He did not touch me. Perhaps he had deduced – wisely – that the feel of his hand on my flesh would drive me to madness.

Yet he could not and did not control the waft of his sweet breath as it washed over me, nor the reflections that bounced from his iridescent skin. He breathed words to me and against my better judgment, I listened. I drifted.

The meaning of the sonnet went completely over my head. I did not care about dissecting it. I could not have cared less. He could have been reading the instructions on a can of Campbell's chicken soup.

"Such is my love, to thee I so belong, that for thy right myself will bear all wrong." He finished quietly, weaving such emotion through his voice that it left a lump in my throat that would not abate.

The fog in my mind cleared and I processed the meaning of that last line.

He had just declared that he was prepared to take the entire blame for what had happened between us. He was gearing up to once more assume the burden of responsibility in our relationship. To tie it around his neck like a yoke.

My brain was whirring now. I was seeing more clearly than I had in months.

Throughout our time together he had taken complete and total liability for everything that happened between us. If I fell and hit my head, it was his fault for not being around to catch me. If I knowingly pushed him past his limits, it was his fault for not maintaining a tighter leash over himself. If I cut my finger and Jasper took a snap at me, it was his fault for exposing me to the dangers of his world.

He had coddled and cosseted me, shielding me from every conceivable danger. And it had gotten too much for him. Of course it had. Who wouldn't become wearied with a job like that?

I knew that he loved me – even now, I knew that – but I also knew that he had never once viewed me as an equal. Never once allowed me to have a say in my own destiny. Oh sure, he'd taken my feelings into account whenever possible, but his own judgment about what was right had always completely overruled mine.

I was to blame as well. I had allowed it to happen. I had allowed myself to be overshadowed by him. In adoring him from such a lofty pedestal, I'd lost my identity. My whole being was about loving him and being loved by him. And when that was taken away... I was lost.

No wonder he had left. No wonder. I had not managed to hang onto even the most tenuous iota of myself around him. I had been so mired in self-doubt and insecurity, in my own selfish desires, in my puppy-eyed adoration of him, that I had bent to his every half-imagined whim. My every action around him had screamed of my inadequacy. How could I blame him for not respecting my wishes, when I hadn't respected them myself?

If we were ever going to have a future together – if we ever got another shot at this, then I had to cling onto the girl I'd become without him. I had built myself up as best I could and now I had to use that strength to make him see me – really see me, for the first time. I had to maintain my distance. Only then would I ever be able to regain any modicum of self-respect.

And maybe, whispered the errant, hopeful voice at the back of my head, maybe someday I would be able to believe myself worthy of him.

I shook my head at him, feeling my entire body sag towards earth. I was very tired and very sad.

"I don't want to see you right now, Edward."

The pain in his eyes nearly undermined my command of myself. I could feel every cell in my body reaching towards him, longing to cradle him to me. Instead, I turned and picked up the wicker laundry basket, empty except for an errant sock, and started towards the house.

He wasn't giving up as easily this time. I could feel it. I could sense his determination. He jogged a few paces behind me, his voice beseeching.

"Bella, please. Please. You... you have no idea what these last few months have done to me. I was thinking of you, seeing your face in my mind every minute I was away. Please. This is killing me."

I stilled.

There was a few moments of disbelieving blankness, and then a monster broke loose in my chest. The anger was too big, I couldn't contain it. It was a raw thing, scrabbling at my stomach, shrieking for release. I wrestled with it, knowing that no good could come of setting it free.

"Please," he breathed, and I felt a feather-light touch on my right shoulder. "Bella. Bella, I love you. It's been hell, being away from you. I promise, whatever pain I've put you through, I've put myself through it a thousand times over."

That was it. I snapped. The rage this time was not the frenzied monster that had driven me to slap him. This was icy cool in the back of my throat. It locked my tears in place and kept my voice steady.

I spun to face him. It was as if I was looking at him from a great distance.

"You think you understand what I've been through?" I asked. My voice was very calm and very soft. I noticed this and was absurdly pleased. "You think you have the slightest comprehension, the barest whisper of knowledge of what the last few months have been like for me?"

No. No he didn't. And he wouldn't.

Unless I showed him.

Unless I...

Oh god. I couldn't. It was too hard.

But he was there in front of me and his voice and his face and his smell...

Absurdly enough it was that last which finally broke me. His scent wafted over my face and I could feel my body relax, ever so slightly. It made me ridiculously angry, that he could have such a dramatic physical effect on me without even knowing it.

I was weak. I was weak and I didn't deserve him and I...

With that, every semblance of control I had over my words and actions broke down. Suddenly I was no longer a rational creature. I was driven by pure instinct. In that moment, all I wanted was to hurt him as much as he'd hurt me.

I took a step closer to him and smiled. I could feel it on my face. It felt terrifying.

I met his eyes with mine and rested my hand on his shoulder.

"I don't want you," I whispered, watching as his face jolted in shock. "You don't mean anything at all to me. You're no good for me. You were just a distraction. You're very good looking, you know, and I'm just a weak human, after all. You fooled me for a while, but now I see that behind the mask you're a complete monster. A soulless, evil, unnatural vampire. A murderer. How could I ever have loved you?"

The monster in my head was roaring with victory. I stepped back from him, let my hand fall from its place on his shoulder.

Edward was trembling, his body a clenched fist of pain. I could see it now. Could see his entire world crashing down around him as I confirmed his every fear, his deepest insecurities, his every half-imagined flaw.

I could see him breaking apart and something sick and twisted inside gloried in it. Finally. Finally we were equals. Finally we were suffering in equal amounts. My words had dripped their poison into his soul.

"Now you're beginning to understand, Edward," I whispered. "Now you're just starting to grasp what you did to me. How does it feel? Is there anything I can say or do to help in this moment? What if I told you I was lying? Would that help? Would the fact that I don't feel like that, have never felt like that soothe your pain? Would the revelation that no matter what I do, my sick heart continues to love you, help?"

I watched him for another moment as he struggled to breathe.

"No, I didn't think so," I murmured quietly, then turned my back on him and walked into the house.

--


	3. Remembrance

My manhood is cast down in the flood of remembrance,

I weep like a child for the past.

"Piano", D.H. Lawrence

--

How was it that her face could look so angelic as she slept, even with the knowledge that her beautiful soul was wracked with pain?

All I could do was stare at her, from my perch in the large oak tree outside her window. I had honoured her request for me to leave her room, but I could not force myself to move any further away from her than this. Not after what I'd just witnessed.

For maybe the millionth time since I had left her, I cursed myself. My hundred-and-eight year old mentality had failed to account for my seventeen year old stupidity.

I should have known not to trust my own judgement when it came to her. After all, I'd never been in love before. Hadn't I witnessed, time and time again, what fools that emotion made out of every man on the planet – regardless of age?

I had seen scores of grandfathers marry nubile twenty-three year olds, so blinded by lust that they could not see the intrinsic difficulties in maintaining a relationship with such a vast age gap. I had seen hundreds of young men broken apart by love, cursing the day they were born to feel that much pain. I had witnessed, time and time again, the devastating consequences that came with denying love, with forcing love, with refusing love, and especially with leaving love.

Yet that had not stopped me from falling for the biggest lie my convoluted and morose brain had ever chosen to force upon me – that I could exist, for even a minute, without Isabella Swan.

Every second I had been away from her had been utter torture. Looking at her now, I could not understand how I had managed to ever walk away from her in the first place. Particularly once the Bella-shaped hole in my life had made itself known – oh, about three seconds after I had left the town's boundaries.

I had gritted my teeth against the anguish, sweated with it, cried out from it, and finally succumbed to it. And yet it was only one-tenth of what I was feeling now.

How could I have gotten it so completely, unutterably wrong? How could I have thought, even for a second, that my leaving would not cause her to suffer just as fully as it would me?

I had anticipated some initial sorrow, yes. I had experienced, through thousands of minds, the ache of love lost, the sting of rejection. And somehow I had managed to convince myself that that was all Bella would feel. A paltry, trifling heartache that would soon pass and allow her to go on and lead a full and satisfying life.

*How* had I been so *stupid*?!

I had dared to be *angry* with her for believing my poisonous words – for allowing her faith in my devotion to be broken so easily. Yet I had done precisely the same thing. After the millions of ways in which she had sworn her love – after the countless situations in which she had proved it, unquestioningly, over and over again – after all of that, I still dismissed her feelings as the trivial fancies of any eighteen year old girl.

I buried my face in my hands. Mistake after mistake after mistake. The great Edward Cullen, rendered powerless and broken by a mere mortal.

A small cough shook my consciousness at the precise same moment that a flood of familiar thoughts made their presence known.

Alice.

"What do you want?" I growled harshly, hating any interruption, no matter how necessary, of my self-loathing.

She swung herself up beside me. "Just trying to make your life a little easier," she trilled lightly, cheerful as always. She pressed a package into my hands and leaped back to earth, graceful as a prima ballerina.

I stared at her. "That's it?"

A deluge of ABBA lyrics and X-rated images of Jasper were my only answer as she bounded away, into the night.

Alice was blocking me. Either she'd seen something catastrophic and wanted to spare me from witnessing it, or she'd seen something wonderful and wanted me to experience it first hand.

Hoping against hope that it was the latter, I slipped quietly through Bella's window, swallowing the deluge of guilt I felt at disrespecting her wishes. I laid the rose, together with a note, next to her on the pillow. It felt like a ridiculously insignificant gesture in the face of what I had done to her, but I wanted her to have it anyway.

Laying a gentle kiss on her cheek, I left her room as quickly as possible, resuming my vigil and hoping beyond hope that I could set about fixing things in the morning.

--

I had been watching her for hours, trying to gather my thoughts and my courage to talk to her. I had seen for myself just how ineffective my gift had been and was shocked to find myself mildly chagrined at her reaction.

Had I seriously thought it would be that easy? That she would melt at the sight of something so clichéd, so easily achieved?

Yes. Yes I had. My arrogance apparently knew no bounds. I was actually shocked that she hadn't already welcomed me back with open arms. Shocked and annoyed.

Swallowing my pride, I ghosted across the backyard to stand behind her as she hung laundry. I watched her for a moment before speaking. The muscles in her beautiful back were working overtime, struggling to pin damp fabric to the line. Obviously she wanted to make the most of the all-too-rare sunshine, or was seeking the distraction of manual labour, because I knew for a fact that the Swan house contained a clothes dryer.

"Bella," I breathed quietly, and watched in agony as her frame became rigid. She made no reply, but merely carried on with her task.

I wanted to grab her, whisk her away. Somewhere, anywhere other than this. The meadow. My parents' house. Somewhere full of happy memories, somewhere I could convince her of exactly how much I loved her.

I settled for reaching out to touch the back of her hand, lightly, as she reached for another article of clothing.

"Don't." Her voice was angry and I jerked my hand back, affronted. Irritation was something I was not used to hearing in her voice, or seeing in her face. Irrational, kittenish annoyance, yes, but nothing as ugly as anger had never been directed towards me. I swallowed, hard, as once more I realised the magnitude of what I had done to her.

"Please tell me what to do," I whispered, watching her. "Please tell me how to make this right. I'll do anything."

Her heart exploded. A flame of blood rushed up her neck to ignite her cheeks. I could read her body but, as ever, her mind remained impenetrable.

"There's nothing you *can* do." Her voice was very hard.

Chilly tendrils of fear raced across my body. This was not my Bella. I didn't know where she had gone, but this was not her. This angry, closed-off woman was completely foreign to me.

I had to do something to get her back. To resurrect the girl I loved.

I had to clear my throat twice to speak. "Do you remember...? Do you remember getting that volume of the works of Shakespeare, that day in Port Angeles?"

I saw her shoulders stiffen up and I knew that she was back there, briefly. Back in the meadow, her head lying in my lap, her eyes closed as I read to her. A slight smile gracing her face as she mouthed my lines along with me. Vowing her love to me, over and over, through Shakespeare's verses.

I came to stand in front of her. If my heart could have beaten, it would have been racing – sensing imminent victory. This had to reach her. The memory of what we'd shared had to get through to her, make her crumble, make her mine again.

I murmured words to her, and to my disbelief, she listened. I exhaled as much of my breath over her as I could, watching as it fanned gentle strands of her hair against her face, knowing the effect it had on her. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I had chosen Sonnet 88 purposefully, but I could not for the life of me remember why. The meaning washed over me – over us both. Slowly, as I watched her face relax, I dared to believe again. Soon I would get to hold her.

"Such is my love, to thee I so belong, that for thy right myself will bear all wrong." I finished quietly, musing over the unutterable truth of that statement. I would take as much blame as she would give me. I would shoulder it bravely. I would take all of her pain and her fear and her loneliness and banish them.

My hands were on the verge of reaching out and drawing her to me when I noticed her body tautening. I watched, in horrified fascination, as emotion after emotion whirred across her face, each more inscrutable than the next. This was not the reaction I had been hoping for. This was something else entirely.

Her face went completely blank, and she opened her eyes. She looked very tired and very sad.

"I don't want to see you right now, Edward." She said it quietly, impassively, and turned to leave.

What...? *What*?

I couldn't leave it at that! Not now that I was so close – that I had been so close. I jogged after her, calling out in desperation. I was not above begging. I was not above anything.

My words fell forth in a tumult. "Bella, please. Please. You... you have no idea what these last few months have done to me. I was thinking of you, seeing your face in my mind every minute I was away. Please. This killing me."

She stilled in her position in front of me. I didn't even think she was breathing.

"Please," I breathed again, my hand reaching up of its own accord, brushing against her shoulder. Dared I hope that I was finally getting through to her? "Bella. Bella, I love you. It's been hell, being away from you. I promise, whatever pain I've put you through, I've put myself through it a thousand times over."

Her shoulders rose at that point. She spun to face me, and the look in her eyes shook me to my very core. Anger and passion and desperation and pure madness. I didn't need Jasper to know that the potency of the emotions coming off her small frame was unbelievable. I half expected her hair to crackle with static from the force of it.

"You think you understand what I've been through?" she asked. Her voice was deceptively calm, soft, while she stood in front of me like a terrifyingly beautiful angel of destruction. "You think you have the slightest comprehension, the barest whisper of knowledge about what the past eight months have been like for me?"

She smiled at me, and it was a gentle thing, belying her words. She took a step closer, allowing her eyes to meet mine , to melt into me. Her hand came up and rested on my shoulder.

"I don't want you," she said, softly, tenderly, and I inhaled in shock. "You don't mean anything at all to me. You're no good for me. You were just a distraction. You're very good-looking, you know, and I'm just a weak human, after all. You fooled me for a while, but I see now that behind the mask you're a complete monster. A soulless, evil, unnatural vampire. A murderer. How could I ever have loved you?"

The world around me contracted down to a single point. I stared at her face, her beautiful, gentle face as she spoke these words. So calmly, so tenderly confirming my every fear, my deepest insecurities, my every half-imagined flaw.

She regarded me silently for a moment as I struggled to breathe, and as I watched, her smile morphed into something hard and cold. She stepped back from me, allowed her hand to fall from its place on my shoulder, and watched in bitter satisfaction as my world fell apart.

Dimly, through the roaring in my ears, I heard her whisper. "Now you're beginning to understand, Edward. Now you're just starting to grasp what you did to me. How does it feel? Is there anything I can say or do to help in this moment? What if I told you I was lying? Would that help? Would the fact that I don't feel like that, have never felt like that, soothe your pain? Would the revelation that no matter what I do, my sick heart continues to love you, help?"

She watched me for another moment, a bitter smile twisting her lips.

"No, I didn't think so," she murmured calmly, then turned and walked away.

--


	4. Warmth

You could warm me like the sun;

You could cure me with a kiss!

One embrace would melt all this

Black Siberia within!

"Song for an Afternoon", Charles Baudelaire, translated from French by Walter Martin.

--

My truck's windscreen wipers swept back and forth, back and forth.

It was hypnotic. I counted them in series of ten. Upon every third swipe I blinked my eyes furiously and the tears gathered there dissolved into nothingness. Upon every fifth, they were back, as insistent as ever.

I didn't know where I was going or what I was going to do once I got there. I was on complete autopilot. My brain was carefully tiptoeing around any association that could bring me pain.

I had not realised that my bitter victory over Edward would leave me raw and wounded, too. I had never entertained the idea of hurting him until a split second before I had done so, and so had not examined all of the possible outcomes.

I had not thought it was possible for me to become even more mired in pain. Never, in my wildest dreams, had I imagined that his hurt would magnify my own so much more.

I blinked, off the beat, and focused my eyes back to the rhythmic swish of the wipers. Back and forth, back and forth. Left, right, left right. Up, down, up, down. One, two, three, four...

I did not know where he was. I had left him standing there in the backyard with my father's jeans flapping on the line behind him. Left him with his eyes blank and his hands grasping uselessly at empty air.

Just like how he'd left me.

I had no idea how long catatonia lasted in vampires. I had to assume that at some point it would wear off and he would run for the hills. Happy to be rid of me at last.

At least this time he'd have no reason to blame himself. I was the one who'd screamed at him like a harpy. I was the one who'd physically assaulted him. I was the one who'd shone a spotlight on everything that he doubted about himself.

My foot hit the brakes and the truck skidded to a stop. Dazed, I looked around me.

I wasn't sure when I had made the decision to go to La Push, but here I was. Right on the boundary line.

I took a deep breath, and glanced in the rear-view mirror. Just for posterity's sake, I told myself.

No glint of silver, no flash of liquid fire met my eyes. The sun did not fall and shimmer on crystalline skin. I was alone.

Well then.

I took a deep breath and pushed the accelerator. I did not look back.

--

Jacob was out of the house and pulling the driver's seat door open before the truck had finished rolling into his backyard. His hands made swift work of the buckles lashing me to the seat and before I could blink, I was outside, being cradled to him, his warmth surrounding me, protecting me.

"Bella," he murmured against my hair, his large hand cupping the back of my head.

That gesture, that small brotherly signal of his regard for me, was enough to unravel me entirely. My entire body sagged against him and I burst into tears.

"Jake... Jake," I sobbed, clutching his shirt with desperate fingers. I did not deserve his attention, his affection, but I greedily took it anyway.

His hand was rubbing comforting circles on my back now, his voice honey-smooth in my ear.

"Shh, shh. Bells, stop crying. It's okay. I'm here. I'll never let anything happen to you."

This was so utterly uncomplicated. I could so easily do this. I could so easily sink into the easy grace of our friendship, let him surround me with his unconditional acceptance. Cauterise my numb soul with his warmth. With Jacob, I felt just enough to remember that I was, after all, human.

My tears had slowed, his calming presence working on my jagged feelings like salve on a wound.

He leaned back, ever so slightly, and tipped my chin up so I had to look him in the eye.

"Bella, honey, what's the matter?" he asked gently. His eyes were full of concern.

"Jake," I whispered, and to my utter horror, I felt a giggle rise up inside me. It burst out like air escaping from an over-stretched balloon, and suddenly I couldn't stop.

There was absolutely nothing funny about the situation, and yet I was laughing so hard that I was bent double, my stomach cramping, my eyes watering.

"Jake," I managed to wheeze between laughing attacks, "I think I'm going crazy."

From the look on his face, I could see he concurred heartily with my estimation, but to his credit, he just waited for me, his hand rubbing my back soothingly, lovingly.

My hysteria eventually ebbed and I straightened up to look at him.

He just stood there, looking back. His gaze held concern and affection and trust and warmth and yes, love.

And yet, it was nothing I couldn't handle. There was no existentialist angst to contend with, no decades of self-loathing to overcome, no instinctive killing urge to battle. His emotions were simple and pure and uncomplicated and exactly what I needed in that moment.

I held out my hand to him and he took it, his long fingers wrapping around mine securely.

"Will you go somewhere with me?" I asked quietly.

I could see the frustrated curiosity in his eyes, could see his longing to ask exactly what the hell had happened in Italy, but to his credit, he suppressed it.

Smiling down at me, he tugged me back towards the truck.

"Anywhere, Bells. Anywhere."

--

I was seated on chilly sand, my eyes riveted to the sea, fascinated by its movements. I had witnessed the power of water thousands of times and yet it never stopped affecting me. I felt almost as though my senses were numbed as I followed the path of each wave, from its forming out at sea all the way to its dissolving in white foam against the land.

The sense of reassurance this everyday occurrence brought me was unbelievable. No matter what happened, new waves would form, race towards shore, and bubble out. Sometimes sedately, sometimes angrily, sometimes with a gurgling laugh. It didn't matter how or why it happened, it just happened. Every time. No matter what. The inevitability of it soothed my frazzled nerves.

A calloused hand waved in front of my face, distracting me from my musings.

"I didn't come out here to stare at you staring at the ocean all day, you could have done that by yourself," Jake teased, his voice and eyes light with gentle humour.

I smiled, wrapping my arms around my knees. "Sorry," I said light-heartedly, "I shouldn't have expected an immature teenage boy to understand the deep philosophical ponderings that are raised in a woman's head when around the sea." I winked at him to take the sting out of my words and was rewarded with a large grin.

"Come on," he commanded, seizing my hand between his large ones and pulling me to my feet. My feet slipped a little in the soft sand and he reacted instantly, wrapping his arm securely around my waist. He began towing us towards the water.

"What are you doing?" I protested, resisting the motion. "I didn't bring my swimsuit and I am *not* skinny dipping with you, Jacob Black!"

He threw his head back and laughed. "As if I would entertain such a thought about a lady," he teased, his eyes sparkling with his amusement. "We won't go deep enough for you to need a swimsuit, I promise."

"I hate the feeling of wet denim," I grumbled, then tottered slightly as he came to an abrupt halt beside me. He looked at me for a second, deliberating, then dropped to one knee in front of me.

For a moment I was speechless. Then, in a hurry, I found my voice.

"Wh... what the hell are you doing?" I stuttered, panic evident in every syllable as I registered the all-too-familiar pose.

He looked up at me through his lashes and gave me a slight smile. "Trust me, Bella."

I was about to protest when I felt his strong fingers curl unexpectedly around my right ankle. I stumbled, catching onto his shoulder for support as he raised my leg gently so that the ball of my foot came to rest on his raised thigh, the pad of my heel just above his kneecap. I was not wearing socks, and I could feel the hard muscle of his leg beneath his jeans.

I looked into his face. His dark eyes were very soft, pleading for... what? I had no idea, but the expression disarmed me completely. This was Jacob. I had nothing to fear from him. I gave him a tiny nod.

Gently, so gently, his warm fingers skimmed the hem of my jeans, rolling them up, like you would roll up a child's to prevent them from tripping. I could barely breathe, stunned into silence at the tenderness of the moment.

I was acutely aware of the compromising position we were in. And yet I wasn't. With one motion, Jake could have reached out and circled my belly-button with the tip of his nose, and yet my muscles were perfectly relaxed. I trusted him that implicitly.

His hands rolled the stiff fabric up my right leg to mid-thigh, then repeated the motion with the left.

By the end, I was barely breathing. The feeling of his warm fingers brushing innocently across the skin of my inner thigh as they worked was indescribable. Nobody had ever touched me there before and it woke strange, yearning sensations within me, feelings that made me shiver and ache. The hand I'd placed on his shoulder for support was sweating, and I knew it had nothing to do with his heat.

He rose before me, as graceful as a jungle cat, and brushed the sand off his knees in a casual gesture. I might have bought it, except for the fact that I could plainly see the tremor in his hands. I knew my cheeks were stained red. I could almost feel my heart working overtime.

He took a deep breath, then smiled tenderly at me, holding out his hand again.

"Problem solved," he said, and only someone who knew him as well as I did would have detected the note of shy uncertainty in his voice. I could only look at him dumbly as he took my hand, once more towing me towards the water.

I gasped, my awkwardness forgotten when the first swell of water licked my toes.

"It's freaking FREEZING!!" I shrieked, jumping out of the way as quickly as possible. Jacob took one at my face and bellowed with laughter. I glared at him and retreated further back, almost out of the path of the water now.

I could see the devious idea alight in his mind the second it began to form.

"N –" I protested, but was forced to stop, with a squeal of outrage, when he kicked a cascade of icy water at me, drenching me from my knees down. His laughter echoed off the cliff faces.

I hopped on the spot, growling at him. "You little...!"

I lunged into deeper water, intent on reciprocating the gesture. When the sea reached the bottom of my still-dry jeans, I drew my leg back slowly, then kicked as hard as I could, intending to completely soak him.

A bad idea, even by my standards. My splash barely connected with him, doubled-over with laughter as he was, and the forward momentum was too violent. My other foot went from under me and I fell backwards, landing, with a splash, on my backside in the surf.

I was submerged for a second before my natural buoyancy brought me to the surface. I choked as salt water filled my mouth, spluttering, coughing, and finally, despite myself - laughing. He was still in hysterics, after all, and there was no coming back from this. I was completely soaked, no matter what I did.

He was so utterly incapacitated by his amusement that he didn't seem to register it when I slipped beneath the surface of the water. I could still hear his deep laugh making the air vibrate above me. I crept around him silently. I opened my eyes underwater, ignoring the sting of salt. I could see his blurry ankle right in front of me.

With all the force I could possibly manage, I caught it and jerked it towards me, watching in satisfaction as his body hit the water three seconds later.

I surfaced, grinning, to watch him flail about, spluttering indignantly.

An unfamiliar sensation swept through me – so unfamiliar, in fact, that it took me a few moments to register what it was.

Peace.

--


	5. Hope

Love doesn't hurt so I know I'm not falling in love,

I'm just falling to pieces.

"Wreck of the Day" – Anna Nalick.

--

Twin rhythms kept my mind from disturbing places this time around. The regular sweeps of the windscreen-wipers were now timed in a perfect cadence with Jacob's soft breathing.

His body heat was so intense that I could feel it radiating into my side as I drove. We were both absolutely soaked, but I was wrapped in a thick woollen blanket that he had pulled out of a hidden compartment under the seat with the air of an excited magician. The windows of the car were steamed with condensation from our slowly drying bodies.

We weren't speaking. We didn't have to. There was no need to fill the space between us with words. I was utterly comfortable, safe and secure.

Every so often he would catch my eye, and a slight, soft smile would twist his lips. More often than that, I would feel his gaze scorch my collarbone, the shape of my ear, the side of my thigh, and look up just in time to see his eyes sliding quickly and guiltily away.

That was okay too, though. It did not overwhelm me with hope or shoot me through with life. It was what it was. The love of a best friend, the admiration of a nice boy.

Eventually our journey had to end, though, and I heaved a sigh as I drew up to his backyard, wearily contemplating the hour. I should really start heading home. Charlie was due back at the house soon, and he would freak if I wasn't there.

I turned to him to say as much, but he was already reaching for my hand.

"Come in for a few minutes to dry off," he said softly, his thumb sweeping across my knuckles.

I swallowed. Longing rose mistily in my throat.

"I shouldn't," I sighed, but for the second time that evening, the hope in his eyes floored me. I allowed him to pull me from the truck and shepherd me into the house.

Inside, I peeled the now-damp blanket from my shoulders and laid it carefully on the nearest radiator to dry.

"Can you grab me a towel?" I asked cheerfully, spinning around to face him.

In a movement so fast as to be barely perceptible, his eyes dropped and his face flooded with colour. In the next second he was moving away from me, his feet stumbling on the floors he'd walked on his whole life.

"Sure," he called back to me, and his voice was several octaves too high.

I glanced down at myself and felt instant understanding hit me like a ton of bricks. The shirt I wore was light and clung to my body like a second skin. And I was so cold...

I crossed my arms over my chest, mortified but unable to stop a small smile from tugging at my mouth. I had been a ghost for so long. It was nice to be seen. It was nice to have a boy look at me and feel normal teenage lust, unhindered by guilt or fear or shame.

It was nice to know that someone *wanted* me, even if Edward didn't, even if he never had...

A warm, fluffy towel hit me in the face and fell right into my outstretched arms. I blinked and looked up just in time to see Jacob's arm retreat from around the corner.

"Just going to get changed." His voice was still too high. I shook my head, amused.

When I unwrapped the towel, something fell to the floor. I bent to pick it up and held it for a few moments without comprehending what it was. I shook it out and studied it, then smiled. He had given me one of his t-shirts.

Briskly I removed my soaked top and dried my body as quickly as I could, then slipped it on. The well-worn cotton whispered against my skin. I dragged the collar up to my nose briefly and inhaled, smiling.

It was way too big, completely enveloping me and falling past my knees, so I felt comfortable enough to slip my jeans off, wringing them out in the kitchen sink and then turning to yell in the direction of his room.

"Jake, can I throw my clothes in the dryer?"

"Of course," he called back.

I could hear him padding down the hall before he came into view. He had changed and his face had relaxed. He was carrying his own soaked garments in one hand and reached out to grab mine as he headed to the dryer.

I leaned against a kitchen counter, watching him stuff our clothes into the drum and turn the dial without even a cursory glance.

His ease with simple household tasks endeared him to me. I had never had a brother, but I knew enough of teenage boys to know that it was rare enough for them to realise that there was a process between them dumping clothes in the laundry basket and receiving them back, freshly laundered, three days later. Never had I heard of them actually participating in the method. Of course, he must have done these things for Billy for years, ever since his sisters had left home – probably before.

The thought, though I had had some variation of it many times, surprised me. I realised suddenly that I wasn't the only one used to taking care of the adults in my life.

He turned to me, smiled gently. The lust I had glimpsed in his eyes earlier had completely disappeared. He was my best friend again, nothing more, nothing less.

He led me to the living room. "Can I interest you in some light television?" he asked flippantly. His hand was hovering about an inch from my lower back. I could feel the waves of heat.

I paused, bit my lip. "I really shouldn't," I said reluctantly. "Charlie has resisted the urge to bawl me out thus far but I don't think I can deny him the chance for much longer. Besides, he'll probably have an aneurysm if he gets home and I'm not there... *again*."

His smile never wavered. "So ring him at work. See if he's leaving, and if he is, if he minds you spending a few hours here."

I stared at him. "Are you seriously suggesting that I talk to my irate father for the first time since he threatened to ground me for the rest of my existence... *over the phone*?! And ask him for a *favour* on top of that?"

He shrugged, unrepentant. "Can't hurt." His smile was innocent and absolutely impossible to refuse.

I sighed heavily and ran a hand through my hair. "Fine," I acquiesced grudgingly, "but if he starts yelling I'm passing him straight to you."

He just chortled lightly and passed me the telephone.

Minutes later I hung up and smiled at him. Not waiting for more, he punched his fist into the air and whooped. I giggled. His delight in the prospect of more of my company warmed the pit of my stomach.

"He's working on a case," I explained briefly as we settled on the couch. "He won't be home till late. I don't think he even realised he was supposed to be mad at me, that's how tired and stressed he is." I felt a twinge of remorse at the thought of my weary father, stretched over his desk, and vowed to cook something extra-special for him.

A shiver ripped through me and I wrapped my arms around myself. I hadn't even registered the fact that I was cold. My senses were frazzled.

Before I could blink, I was wrapped tightly in a comforter and Jacob had resumed his position on the couch. Reaching down, he grabbed my bare feet and tugged them into his lap, covering them with his hands.

"Jake," I protested, blushing hotly at the compromising position this put me in. Yes, I was completely covered in the blanket – my modesty could not have been better preserved – but this still felt like way too much intimacy, too quickly.

Then the extra warmth hit my toes and my embarrassment dissolved into a giant puddle, along with my spine. He watched me for a minute, grinning cockily.

"You were saying?" he asked impishly. His smile lit up his face when all I could do was mumble disagreeably back at him.

For a while, we watched television in silence. Wisely, he had picked something light and funny, with no romantic overtones. Occasionally I giggled, entertained not by the one-liners but by the deep chuckles that came emanating from him to tickle my feet with the vibrations.

I kept looking at him. I could not stop. I was suddenly thankful like I had never been before.

For a moment I entertained the idea that there was a higher power that had put him into my life for a reason. He had been my saving grace. He looked after me so purely, took care of me so unconditionally that for a few moments I felt hot and grateful tears prick at the corners of my eyes.

At that precise moment, he caught me red-handed. I had a few seconds of seeing his eyes go wide with concern before I dropped my own, embarrassed to be caught in a moment of such weakness.

Instantly his hand was on my cheek, cradling it. His thumb caught an errant tear and wiped it away.

"Bells," he breathed, and the sheer emotion in his voice went through and through me. "Don't cry. You never need to cry around me."

I bit my lip, wanting so desperately to explain that I was not sad – that I was happier than I had been in months, just here with him – that he meant so much to me.

My intentions, and his, were entirely innocent. But when I raised my eyes again I saw that his had dropped to my lip, and that the heated look I had glimpsed earlier had reappeared on his face.

I was entranced, caught like a fly in amber. We had been in almost this exact position once before, and fate had thwarted us. I felt the air crackle between us just as it had back then, whispering countless possibilities. The feeling that had been building in me all day surged. Suddenly I was standing on a precipice looking down.

I could not move as his face neared mine, came inch by tiny inch closer. I did not know what to do, and I was so afraid. I had leapt off this same cliff once before and all it had led to was heartbreak and loneliness.

We were less than a centimetre apart when he froze. His warm eyes met mine, his gaze probing, questioning. I could see that at the slightest, most unconscious urging from me, he would lean back, get up and pretend like nothing had ever happened.

My throat ached. What had I done to deserve that kind of single-minded devotion? I was not worthy of it.

And still he waited, and his breaths became mine, and his close warmth wrapped me in a secure cocoon. All my senses were full of Jacob. Jacob. Jacob...

I could not help it then. I leaned in.

Softly, so softly, his mouth brushed across mine. His massive frame that screamed of power and muscle, of dominance - none of that was present in his kiss. His lips were warm and gentle and excruciatingly tender.

I held very still. I was not used to being kissed like this. And I was still so unsure, so afraid.

He kissed me delicately, once, twice more. And then he drew back.

I kept my eyes closed, terrified. Not wanting to read his expression. Not wanting him to read mine.

The shrill tone of the telephone broke the atmosphere definitively.

My eyes flew open and I stared at him wide-eyed, the sense of déjà vu startling. I thought I felt a slight sigh ghost out of his mouth, and then he was up and off the couch, turning his back to me, reaching for the phone.

"Black residence," he said curtly, into the receiver, and my senses tingled again.

I watched him, taking him in as fully as I could. The broad lines of his shoulders. The muscles of his back. His long, strong fingers raking through his hair.

For a moment, I saw him not as Jacob, my best friend, my safety net. Suddenly I was achingly aware of his beauty, body and soul. Suddenly I saw how easy, how simple it would be to just... just...

His fingers tightened around the phone.

"*What*?" he seethed, and the sound was so at odds with the tender Jacob I had spent the day with and the thoughts I'd been contemplating that it made my breath freeze in my trachea.

His hand was clenching and unclenching rapidly as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line.

A few long moments passed. Finally he nodded to himself, his fingers constricting once more.

"Don't move. And don't let *them* move. I know where he's going. I'll take care of it." His voice was calmer now, a cold decisiveness taking over.

He replaced the phone on the receiver and I could tell the control it took him not to smash it. When he turned to face me again, I could have cried.

My Jacob was gone. This was Sam's Jacob. Something was wrong with the pack.

"Bella, I don't know whether or not I should tell you this," he whispered. His voice was pained.

A prickle of horrified premonition ran straight down my spine. "What is it?"

He stared at me wordlessly for a long moment before I lost patience.

"Whatever it is, Jake, it can't possibly be worse than what I'm imagining." I crossed my arms in front of my chest, trying to contain the terror.

He ran his hand through his hair once more before sighing in defeat. His eyes held mine as he began to speak.

"It's the.... it's your... it's Edward. He's crossed the treaty line."

--


	6. Sorrow

How many loved your moments of glad grace

And loved your beauty with love false and true

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

"When You Are Old", William Butler Yeats

--

I felt as though I had been completely immersed in ice-water. Every good feeling Jacob inspired within me, every happy memory that normally engulfed me around him drained straight out of me. Suddenly all I could feel was fear.

"He crossed the treaty line." My voice was flat and dead. I could see Jacob's dread in his eyes as he nodded cautiously.

"And he's on his way here." It was not a question. I knew he was on his way. I knew the only possible reason he would have for entering La Push would be to find me. The only issue was what he planned to do once he arrived.

My body crackled with trepidation. Knowing what I did about the pack – their absolute disdain for vampires, their volatility, their enjoyment of a good fight...

"Is he... have they..." I was so petrified that I couldn't even form the words.

Jacob's voice was fierce. "He will not touch you, Bella." His eyes were blazing with unstated fury.

Touch me? That was the last thing I was worrying about.

Suddenly my words poured forth in a gush of terror. "Is he okay, Jake? I mean, obviously he's not okay, if he's crossed the damn line, but have they attacked? Are they going to attack? Has he been hurt?"

The strangest expression settled on Jacob's face for a fraction of a second, and then it was gone. He shook his head minutely.

"No. He evaded them; he's faster than the other was."

I slumped in relief.

"Bella, I don't want you to worry about him. I'm here. I will never let anything happen to you."

His words washed over me, and I let them go, their meaning dribbling away. My brain was rapidly rebooting, trickles of awareness making their way slowly through my body until finally...

"God," I exploded, "how freaking idiotic can he get?! You would think that one disastrous suicide attempt in a week would be enough for him, but noo, he just has to go break the treaty he's stuck by for the last eighty years because – because what? Because he couldn't find your number in the phonebook?!"

Jacob's mouth had dropped open at the beginning of my tirade. He looked much like I imagined I had, three minutes earlier.

"You're – he's -- that's what you're worried about?" he asked incredulously. "Not the fact that your ex-boyfriend is on his way here to do god knows what, no - what you're worried about the fact that he's an impulsive jackass?! God, Bella, I thought that would have become apparent about, I don't know, three seconds after he left you!"

I could feel my face draining of colour. We had had such a nice day together, he had blocked everything out so completely and now he was bringing up the one thing he knew would push my buttons?

I glared at him. "You don't have any idea what you're talking about, Jake, so just shut the hell up," I spat.

He looked at me like I'd just kicked his puppy. I felt like I was existing in several different dimensions. In one, I was screaming at myself for pushing him away, for hurting yet another person in my life. In another, I was crying, straining towards the doorway, wanting desperately to run into the woods and find Edward, let him take me home, let him take me anywhere.

Since my return from Italy, I had become an entirely different person. For one thing, I had finally learned to compartmentalise. Much as I had done earlier in the day, I rounded up both those versions of Bella and locked them up tight. Now was not the time to start pondering my latent case of split personality.

I paced to the window, ignoring my best friend and his bruised feelings, looking out into the forest. The day had finally turned drizzly and dark, the rain running in rivulets across the glass.

"What's taking so long?" I muttered angrily, mostly to myself. "He should be here by now."

"It will be all right." His voice was laboured. I could hear the undercurrent of worry running through it.

Now was not the time to confront my feelings. Now was not the time to start handling Jake with kid gloves. And now was definitely not the time to apologise.

I rounded on him. "Do you think you can do something for me?" I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest and staring at him.

He looked surprised at my curt tone, but his reply was still instantaneous. "Sure I can." He paused, looking uncertain. "Um, what?"

I took a deep breath. "Let me handle this."

He frowned. "Oh. Sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

"For lying just now. No way. Not a chance."

"All right." I moved around him, heading for the clothes dryer.

My hand was just about to graze the door when his own reached out and laced with it.

"What are you doing?" he asked, and his voice was gentle. No, not gentle. Patronising. He was speaking like he was afraid a stronger tone would snap me in half.

"I'm retrieving my clothes," I snapped. How had I managed to cultivate this unbearable condescension in the men in my life?

His voice was honestly puzzled. "Why? The spin cycle isn't even finished yet."

I straightened up to look at him, feigning a calm I did not feel.

"Because," I said quietly, "if you think I'm going to sit back and watch while you tear the man I schlepped across Europe for into pieces, you have another think coming."

His face was a mask. Stiff and unreadable.

"Why do you still care about him after everything he's put you through?"

"I don't," I said, and reflexively winced as every single thought in my head metaphorically slapped me for telling such a monstrous and obvious lie. I swallowed hard and continued, "Just because I'm not with him anymore doesn't mean I want to witness you ripping him to shreds. If anybody does that, it'll be me." If I haven't done it already...

Casual, Bella, keep it casual. "Besides," I added coolly, "if I leave, we'll avoid this conflict. Whatever Edward wants with me, it's me it concerns. Not you. Not the pack. Just me. I am so sick of having people manage my life for me. Just because you're physically stronger does not mean that you automatically know the best thing to do in every situation."

The thought flitted into my brain that I was delivering this particular lecture to the wrong person entirely, but I brushed it aside impatiently.

The mask fell away, to be replaced by pure frustration.

"I don't think I know what's best for you, Bella, I'm trying to protect you! The leech broke the treaty just to get at you, and for all you know he's planning to just... to just grab you and take off running. Do you seriously expect me to stand by and let that happen?"

"You broke the treaty once before too," I said quietly, and watched him wince. "Ephraim's heir himself, and you smashed it to bits when you told me about them. And they took no action. They never even mentioned it. All I'm asking is for you to extend the same compassion. I know him better than anyone. I can get him to leave here without this getting ugly. I know I can."

I could see him battling against my statement and coming up short as his honest mind saw the sense in my words.

"Besides," I added bitterly, "what, do you think I'm just going to swoon into his arms like some ridiculous heroine from a crappy romance novel? After everything that's happened? Please tell me you don't think so badly of me."

He frowned and shook his head. "I don't think you want to, Bella," he said slowly, "but I don't think you have much of a choice once you get anywhere near him, either."

I folded my arms across my chest, refusing to acknowledge the truth in his words. "Please," I scoffed defiantly, desperately. "Give me some credit. That might have been true once, but things are different now."

He looked at me appraisingly, then nodded, once, very reluctantly.

"Loath as I am to admit it, I see your point," he said slowly. "Fine. You handle this in any way you see fit. But I swear to god, Bella, if he lays a finger on you, if he does anything to hurt you, I will tear him to pieces. Treaty or no damned treaty."

There was no hesitation, no doubt in his face.

I turned and walked to the door, waiting.

"I can live with that," I muttered, staring out into the rain, waiting for him.

--

He emerged from the trees quickly. There was no preamble, no slow build, no sense of impending judgment. He just walked towards me, at a measured but swift pace, and stopped at what seemed like a very deliberate distance - near enough for us to speak comfortably, but too far away for me to reach out and touch him.

I was already in so much trouble. I could literally feel my newfound skill of not acting like I was all broken and pathetic slipping through my fingers. It was impossible for me to not look at him, not drink in the sight of him. I had thought I would never see him again – so many times by now. Despite myself, despite everything, every cell in my body loved him.

I took a breath, and then met his eyes with mine. And I gasped.

Edward was a man awaiting execution, a man for whom there existed no more life in the world. His eyes were two black holes in his face and somehow I knew – I had been the cause of this. I had hurt him that much. I had rendered his beautiful, mobile features into this pale mockery before me.

The rest of the world just fell away. There was no other way to describe it. I was unaware of Jacob, bristling with animosity behind me. The last year melted along with the rest of my logical reasons for staying away from him.

A sound halfway between a strangled sob and a wail made its way out of my chest. I would do anything to restore him to himself. I reached my hand up to touch his cheek. And I watched in disbelief as he took a measured step back, evading my touch.

He cleared his throat, and I could see the effort it took him to say anything. To breathe. To remain upright.

"Please come back to me," he whispered.

I opened my mouth to speak, desperate, but he was already shaking his head.

"Don't say anything just yet," he whispered, and his face was pained. "I don't want you to try to explain. I don't want to know your reasons right now. I don't want to know why you said those things, or why you ran from me. I don't want to know why you came here, of all places, the one place you knew I couldn't follow you."

His eyes were very intense, twisting into mine as he spoke. He paused, took a deep breath, and clenched his jaw. That sign of underlying tension broke my heart.

"I don't want to know why you're wearing another man's shirt and drenched in his scent, or why that same man is standing behind you, ready to rip my throat out." He spoke the words through clenched teeth, and I winced, hating myself.

He continued. "I don't want anything from you, Bella, except the chance to make this right. Please. Just let me talk to you. Just let me attempt to explain."

His eyes held mine. I could not look away.

Refusing him was an impossibility.

He caught the minute nod of my head and I nearly wept as I registered a different emotion rearing its head in his face – gratitude. Whether to me or some unknown force, I could not tell. Carefully, he nodded back, and then continued.

"I don't think I have ever once understood you," he said bluntly, and the corner of his mouth quirked up the tiniest bit. "I have loved you closely and from a distance, held you to me and pushed you away, protected you and flung you into danger, but all the while I felt absolutely certain that nothing you could do would be beyond the bounds of my comprehension. I never thought, for even a second, that you were capable of things I could not understand."

His eyes were still holding mine fiercely, willing me to understand.

His next words were surprising, both in tone and in content. "Because of that, I never respected you or your feelings." His voice was becoming softer.

Tears were rising in my throat. Viciously, I forced them back and waited for him to continue.

"I am... sorrier for that than I can ever express." His mouth constricted, twisting into an ugly grimace of pain. "Had I guessed, for one second, that you – that it was even possible for you to love me in the same way that I love you, I would never have left your side. I would have... Oh Bella, I would have done so many things so differently. I have led us both down this path. Had I listened to you, believed you even once, or just entertained the possibility that I am not the only one of us capable of that kind of devotion, we would be together now, and happy."

Desperately I clawed for some semblance of control. Some small particle of self-respect to break through the web his words were weaving around me.

"Why are you doing this, Edward?" I asked. My voice was harsh. Speaking to him like that tore my throat.

"I'm giving you a choice," he said stoically. "This involves us both. For once in my miserable life I am attempting to take your feelings into account. My first inclination, earlier..." His jaw twitched, his eyes filled with remembered pain, and another part of me withered inside. "...my first impulse was to run as far away as possible. Remove my poisonous presence from your life. Antagonise a... a vicious leprechaun clan. Whatever it took."

"So you decided to piss a few werewolves off? Is that it, is that why you're here?" I bit the words out, injecting them with as much vitriol as I could. I was so afraid. The bricks in the walls I'd built between us were quivering and ready to crumble. "It's a pity we live so near a pack, you could have had an opportunity to stack up some more frequent flyer miles."

He smiled – he actually smiled at my casual reference to his attempted suicide – and shook his head. "No. I told you, it was only my first impulse. I'm not here because I want to kill myself. I'm here because it's where you are."

That one little statement stopped all of my planned snarky remarks in their tracks.

He took a deep breath, then continued.

"I'm... I am so new at this, Bella, but I feel like I'm seeing clearly for the first time in my entire existence. And I'm not here because of my... because of decades of self-loathing or centuries of denied bloodlust. I'm just here. With you. Because to me, it no longer matters that I'm utterly different from you, or that I have more experience on this planet than you do. None of it matters. I am just as scared and uncertain and unsure and lovesick as you are, Bella. In this aspect, in a very real way, I am just another seventeen year old boy. And I'm here to tell you – seventeen year old boys are unbearably stupid."

He smiled again, and his eyes softened even further.

"Eighteen year old girls aren't all that smart either," he pointed out gently. "You walked into a nest of killers to save my life. In this as in everything, you are my inspiration. And so I decided not to care about something as meager as the threat of a pack of shape-shifters. We're too important for me to let you go because of geography."

The world was still spinning, wasn't it? How was it possible that he could be saying these things?

His eyes were still watching mine, calculating my every movement, and yet he still had not moved any closer. My own body was frozen to the ground, but not by any supernatural trickery. I could not smell the honey of his flesh or taste his breath on my tongue. No beam of sunlight reached to illuminate his angel's skin. His clothes had lost their shape with the rain and they hung on his body, baggy and unremarkable. He looked... almost human. Still too unbearably beautiful for words, but as for the rest... almost... ordinary.

His voice reached me again, strengthened in volume and conviction. "I told you once that you were the most important thing in my life. I meant it. And it's still true. It will always be true. No matter what happens. And so I'm here. I followed you to reason with you, to beg you to come back to me. You tried to do the same, didn't you? Back in September? Well, here I am, Bella."

My anger, so long buried, made a brief reappearance. "Don't even think about equating your actions with mine," I hissed.

He shook his head.

"I will equate my actions with yours, and yours with mine," he said quietly. "For the first time, I have the right to do that. I have been... the most arrogant, assuming jerk on the face of the planet, for as long as I've known you. But you changed all that, Bella. You've made us equals, finally. Which in reality is... oh, it's all I've ever wanted."

He raised his arms in an expression of defeat, his face smiling at me. "In this moment, it doesn't matter that I'm a hundred-and-eight year old vampire, that you're an eighteen year old human, that I could kill you with a flick of my fingers, that you could overwhelm me with a drop of your blood. I'm standing here because I'm not trying to make this conversation easier by dazzling you into submission, and any temptation from your side is completely overwhelmed by the scent of the boy behind you."

He was looking at me intently, seriously, lovingly, and my throat was closing.

"All that matters, Bella, is that I love you so much I would die for you, and you've proved, over and over, that the same is true for you. We love each other. No matter what else has happened, I have to believe that that's still true. I don't know what you've been doing here all day and I don't care. No matter what you decide or where you want to go from here, I am yours. I've tried to deny it and I've tried to fight against it, and now for the first time since I met you, I'm just going to accept it. You own me, body and soul. And you have a choice. You can take the easy option, bury your feelings under anger like you've been doing since we got back from Italy and turn your back on this. Or you can decide that we are stronger than that. That we can work this out, together."

I shook my head, fighting the urge to cover my ears with my hands, wanting to block out his words. Wanting to block him out. This was too much; I would surely die of it.

"Whatever you decide..." Here he stopped and swallowed, his eyes still holding mine fiercely. "Whatever you decide, you have to know that. I can step back and I can be a gentleman, but you have to know that I will always love you. Always want you. Always need you. Never doubt that you hold as much power over me as I do over you. If you continue down the road you're on, it will be the end of me. And so I'm asking you once more. Come back to me."

He took a deep breath, and I could see, could actually see the effort it took him to not touch me. He smiled again, and everything I needed to know was there, in that shape his mouth made. He wasn't lying. He was peaceful, and hopeful, and loving. For the first time since I had met him, I could see no trace of guilt line his features.

"I will spend the rest of my life trying to make things right between us. I will undergo every test you can throw at me. I will walk through fire, if that's what it takes. Whatever you want from me, you can have, Bella. And I, in return, only ask you this. Give me the opportunity to show you how much I love you. Come back to me."

A long pause. We stared at each other. Was my heart still beating? Was I still breathing? How could this be real?

"I'm going to leave now," he said softly, "and I'm going to hunt, because physically I can't wait any longer. But know I won't be far. I never will be. And I will always, always return to you."

He took a step backwards, then another one. I could not move, or speak. It was a struggle just to remember how to breathe.

"When you decide," he whispered quietly, "whatever you decide... you know where to find me."

With a motion that would have seemed ridiculous for anybody else, he began to move backwards, away from me. His eyes held mine and if it were possible to communicate all your longing and all your love in a simple gaze, he had done so.

He had taken maybe five steps when the enchantment he had woven over me -- over us both -- broke. Suddenly my whole body was a block of ice as I registered that which I'd been blocking out before.

The howling of wolves, coming ever closer.


	7. Follower

The words are shadows and you cannot hear me.

You walk away and I cannot follow.

~ "Love", Eavan Boland.

--

Breathe. Just keep breathing.

In. Out. My chest rose and fell mechanically. Still the iron band grasping at my dead lungs would not loosen.

She doesn't mean it. She'll never mean it. She loves me. Always has. Always will.

I don't know how long I was standing there, just repeating that to myself. Over and over again. Trying desperately to believe it.

Never before had I felt pain like this. Not even in the past few months. The pain of leaving her had been tempered with self-righteousness. Even the utter and indescribable agony I had felt in learning of her supposed death was nothing compared to this. Then, I had the reassurance of knowing that eventually I would no longer think, or feel, anything at all.

There was no escaping this. This ache that reached down into the very depths of me.

Her words had cut me, had laid my deepest fears and innermost flaws completely bare. Deeper than that was an insecurity that grasped at my bones, shook me to the core. The person I loved most in the world had yanked her love out from under me and without it my whole life fell into meaningless, unrecognisable patterns.

I was angry. I was ashamed. How could a few sentences out of one woman's mouth unravel me so? How dare she do this to me when she knew with certainty how completely in love with her I was?

I loathed myself. I did not deserve her. I had never deserved her.

A wave of realisation hit me.

Suddenly I saw, with perfect clarity, why Bella was acting in this manner. She was pushing me away, as hard as she possibly could, because she too had felt like this – was still feeling like this. My self-hatred had multiplied exponentially in the minutes since those words had left her mouth. I couldn't begin to imagine how much it would grow over months.

And I had the luxury of knowing, from the outset, that she'd lied.

She loved me. She understood me, down to my core, saw the ugliness and the lies, saw the arrogance and stupidity. She saw the monster and loved me anyway.

And I – I who had claimed to be so much wiser, so much more skilled in life than she – I had never once afforded her the same unconditional adoration. I had exalted her and praised her and loved her beyond comprehension, but never had I admitted to her faults. Her kittenish anger and impatience had inspired only condescending amusement from me. I had overlooked her every irrationality and her recklessness, brushed them under the carpet, pretended they didn't exist. Instead of offering her my unreserved acceptance, I had ignored the truth of who she was in order to foster my own ideal image of the woman I loved.

She wasn't an angel. She was an eighteen year old girl who was still hurting beyond all comprehension. She was a mortal and she struggled and fought and cried and bled just like six billion other souls on the planet. And if I was to love her – really and truly love her, with everything in me – then I had to accept that about her, love it too. Love her flaws and her weaknesses, soothe her fears even as she soothed mine.

I had never thought about regarding her as anything less than perfect. Never had I stopped to think about what pressure my unrealistic image must have put on her. How it must have bound her mouth and prevented her from voicing her true feelings, not just once but again and again. How it must have terrified her.

Maybe I had been wrong to berate her for being so insecure. Maybe her insecurity was born from my unrealistic expectations. Being so much wiser than her eighteen years, she surely must have known that as a fallible human being, at some point she would topple from the pedestal I had placed her on.

And I – I had not realised this in time to tell her that I would love her in any incarnation. That I would catch her if she fell, that I would support her through anything.

The epiphanies were building and building within me. I gasped at the sheer force of them, struggled to breathe under their weight.

Nothing she could say to me would stop me loving her. And now I had to accept my whole unfathomable fate, and believe that the same was true for her. Hadn't she told me, not just once but again and again? Hadn't she proved it in a thousand tangible ways?

I could no longer allow my self-loathing and guilt to cast her in a rosy glow. All it did was undermine her at every turn, make me question her love and her sanity. In what universe would an angel love a monster?

She wasn't an angel.

And maybe, just maybe... I wasn't a monster.

Maybe we were just two people who loved each other beyond anything. Maybe it was time I started trusting in that.

I'd told her once that she had awakened my every human instinct. Now I could feel yet another one poking its head up.

I squared my shoulders and lifted my head. The world seemed fresh and new around me. Her scent was still in the air, but despite my overwhelming need to feed, it incited nothing more than a dull tickle in the back of my throat.

I listened carefully, scanning the immediate area. It took me all of three seconds to realise that her truck was no longer parked in front of the house, and then I was running.

Off to fight for the woman I loved.

--

I was running through the forest, my mind entirely set on the task ahead, when a tiny whirlwind struck me in the chest with such force that I fell straight backwards, landing with a dull thud in a pile of dead leaves.

I emerged, coughing and spitting, to be greeted by a negligible force weighing my chest down and a pair of terrified golden eyes.

Alice.

She sat on my chest and refused to move, even when I put both of my hands against her tiny shoulders and pushed.

"What the hell are you doing?" she demanded. Her voice was fierce but her mind displayed the depth of her alarm.

"I'm going to find Bella," I replied, bewildered by her overreaction.

She stared straight back at me. "Edward. Have you any idea where we are?"

"Does it matter?"

"Does it...!" She exhaled in frustration. "Yes it goddamned well matters! You're about half an inch away from the treaty line!!"

"And...?" I prompted, raising my eyebrows in confusion. Didn't she know that the treaty didn't matter anymore? That nothing mattered apart from my newfound sense of *rightness*, and my need to fight for what I knew with everything in me was true?

"And you two have blurred right out of my vision," she snapped, her eyes petrified. "I thought I was panicky when Bella disappeared, but even that wasn't as bad as this. I am completely blind here Edward! You have no idea how this will turn out – whether the wolves will even stop to think before they tear you to pieces! Do you really want to die like that?!"

"I don't want to die at all." And it was true. I had so much to live for, after all.

"Then don't do this." Her eyes, and her mind, pleaded with me. "Pick up the goddamn phone and call her. Ask her to meet you here. Anywhere. Just stop and *think* for two minutes and you'll see how insane this is."

I smiled at her, and clasped her elbows. She allowed me to swing her upwards and off me, extending a hand to help me to rise to my feet.

Lightly, I kissed her on the forehead.

"Alice, the rest of eternity will not be enough to tell you how glad I am to have you for a sister. But right now, I need you to butt out."

I held up a single hand to stop her protestations. "I need to do this," I said quietly, willing her to understand. "And I need to do this without any unfair advantages. I need to just be me. Edward, talking to Bella. Do you realise that I have never given her that? Every single time I've ever spoken to her, I have known exactly how she would respond. By her heartbeat, by her body's every unconscious cue, or by your visions. Don't you see how unfair that is? How unequal?"

Her expression was mutinous, but I could sense the softening in her mind.

"Even this, Alice," I said, grinning broadly. "Even this is so unfair. I can sense your understanding so I'm going to relax. And you can see my decision so you know that there's nothing you can do. This entire conversation is entirely unnecessary."

Her brow furrowed, and I could see a million cogs working in her mind.

I made one more point. "Maybe this is the real reason that Bella's mind is closed to me," I said quietly. "This isn't the way a relationship is meant to work. Finally, I'm seeing that. Finally I'm going to do something to put it right, and I am not about to let an invisible line forged eighty years ago stop me. And Alice, I love you – but you're not going to stop me either."

There was a long, tense pause. And then she swallowed and inclined her head ever so slightly.

"Thank you," I whispered, and moved forward.

Her voice reached me just before I crossed.

"Edward," she called. I turned to look at her, my face enquiring.

She cleared her throat emotionally. "We'll be waiting for you. When you get back. We'll be right here."

I smiled my gratitude at her, then turned and with one foot destroyed eighty years in a single step.

Bella's scent wafted through the air, faint but sure. It called to me, even hideously tainted by the blood of the Quileutes.

The instantly aware and hostile voices of the wolves tickled the edge of my subconscious. All bets were off. I ran as I never had before.

--

She was leaning against Billy Black's door, waiting for me. I saw her before she did me, saw the tension in her shoulders and the terror in her eyes. Something within my chest seared and throbbed as I noticed her attire.

Behind her, the dog's thoughts were fiercely protective, yet controlled. He was playing the last few minutes over and over in his head and I could see the decision he'd made – what she'd forced him to do. And I was grateful. One way or another, this conversation was happening, and it would be so much easier without the distraction of a hostile werewolf.

I knew the exact moment when she spotted me. Her heart sputtered inside her chest, her breathing caught and her spine straightened. Ready for battle. I walked towards her at an achingly slow pace, cultivating my human impression for as long as I possibly could before coming to a stop in front of her. Close enough to reach out and touch her. Far enough away that my vampire charms would be rendered useless.

She was looking at me, her eyes drinking me in, and I knew she was seeing the effect her words had had on me. I could see so many emotions warring for control in her expressive eyes. An unbelievably painful sound broke free of her throat and her hand ghosted upwards, towards my cheek.

I could not have that. If she were to touch me, if the fire of her body was to meet the ice of mine, I knew no force in heaven or earth would stop me from taking her into my arms and never letting go. This was not the time for that, and so I took a measured step backwards, avoiding her touch.

A particle of hurt bewilderment flared to life in her eyes. I cleared my throat, determined to say my piece. Determined to fight harder than I had ever fought for anything in my entire, miserable existence.

"Please come back to me." I had meant to speak confidently and assuredly, but my voice emerged in a croak.

I could see the gears in her head turning, could see her mouth opening, so I shook my head.

"Don't say anything just yet. I don't want you to try to explain. I don't want to know your reasons right now. I don't want to know why you said those things, or why you ran from me. I don't want to know why you came here, of all places, the one place you knew I couldn't follow you."

For a moment, my selfish hurts threatened to overwhelm me as I registered a thousand tiny things. The way the aroma of her flowers was masked by the putrid scent of the dog's flesh. The way his shirt looked on her, the way he had tried to claim her for his own with this stupidly symbolic gesture. The way his thoughts were screaming at me, cursing me to the depths of hell while his every muscle remained locked, ready to intervene at a moment's notice.

I refused to look away from her, needing the reassurance of her eyes on mine.

"I don't want to know why you're wearing another man's shirt and drenched in his scent, or why that same man is standing behind you, ready to rip my throat out." I watched her wince at my tone, hating myself for this extra lapse in control.

Doggedly, I continued. "I don't want anything from you, Bella, except the chance to make this right. Please. Just let me talk to you. Just let me attempt to explain."

Her eyes held mine. I could not look away.

Her head nodded minutely and a swell of gratitude overtook me. I had hurt this woman time and time again and here she was, giving me yet another chance. I nodded back, preparing my words, preparing myself.

"I don't think I have ever once understood you." How true it was. How clichéd, for a man to tell a woman that he'd never had the slightest idea what went on in her head. "I have loved you closely and from a distance, held you to me and pushed you away, protected you and flung you into danger, but all the while I felt absolutely certain that nothing you could do would be beyond the bounds of my comprehension. I never thought, for even a second, that you were capable of things I could not understand."

Like loving me enough to come to Italy. Like loving me that much. In ignorant arrogance I had dismissed her feelings and actions, thinking that I, ever wise, knew best in every given situation.

I eyed her, feeling my new understanding prickle at the edges of my brain. "Because of that, I never respected you or your feelings." Her expression, which up to now had been patiently forgiving, twisted into something else entirely and I felt the thrill of accomplishment. I was surprising her. Good.

"I am... sorrier for that than I can ever express. Had I guessed, for one second, that you – that it was even *possible* for you to love me in the same way that I love you, I would never have left your side. I would have... Oh Bella, I would have done so many things so differently."

Her entire body was beginning to tremble. All I wanted to do was take her into my arms. Forget the words, there was an easier way to convince her of my feelings... But easier didn't always mean better, and I had to do this – to admit my part in our mutual destruction.

"I have led us both down this path. Had I listened to you, believed you even once, or just entertained the possibility that I am not the only one of us capable of that kind of devotion, we would be together now, and happy." I swallowed as the truth of that statement hit me.

She spoke for the first time. "Why are you doing this, Edward?"

I was taken aback by the anger in her voice, but only momentarily. She deserved to be angry at me. Her feelings were valid. Half a speech, however heartfelt, and some fleeting eye contact were not going to convince her of my devotion.

I continued. "I'm giving you a choice. This involves us both. For once in my miserable life I am attempting to take your feelings into account. My first inclination, earlier..."

Despite myself, my voice broke as I remembered the morning's events, remembered the words that had led us here, to this point. I saw her flinch minutely and immediately returned to my speech.

"...my first impulse was to run as far away as possible. Remove my poisonous presence from your life. Antagonise a... a vicious leprechaun clan. Whatever it took."

"So you decided to piss a few werewolves off? Is that it, is that why you're here?" She bit the words out, and I could see how hard she was trying to push me away. Every line in her body rebelled against me.

"It's a pity we live so near a pack, you could have had an opportunity to stack up some more frequent flyer miles."

I smiled. My Bella. It had been so long since I had heard her say anything even remotely humourous.

I shook my head. I needed to make her understand this.

"No. I told you, it was only my first impulse. I'm not here because I want to kill myself. I'm here because it's where you are."

I let that sink in for a few minutes, then took a deep breath and continued.

"I'm... I am so new at this, Bella, but I feel like I'm seeing clearly for the first time in my entire existence. And I'm not here because of my... because of decades of self-loathing or centuries of denied bloodlust. I'm just here. With you. Because to me, it no longer matters that I'm utterly different from you, or that I have more experience on this planet than you do. None of it matters. I am just as scared and uncertain and unsure and lovesick as you are, Bella. In this aspect, in a very real way, I am just another seventeen year old boy. And I'm here to tell you – seventeen year old boys are unbearably stupid."

Truer than any words I had ever spoken. I smiled broadly as the reality of the situation sunk in.

I had intended to remain detached from myself in the course of this speech – to not confuse the truth of what I was saying by excessive emotion. But I could not stop my voice from softening as I looked at her, standing so vulnerably in front of me.

"Eighteen year old girls aren't all that smart either." I smiled at the momentary indignation that stiffened her frame, and continued. "You walked into a nest of killers to save my life. In this as in everything, you are my inspiration. And so I decided not to care about something as meagre as the threat of a pack of shape-shifters. We're too important for me to let you go because of *geography*."

A long silence stretched between us. I could see her watching me, calculating my every movement. I ached to reach for her, to embrace her, to never let her go.

I clenched my fists into two tight balls. I had come so far. I would not allow myself to manipulate her by dazzling her into submission, as I had so often done before. I refused to use the honeyed traps of my kind to fog her reasoning. If we were to go anywhere from here, it would be as Edward and Bella. Nothing more and nothing less.

Hope was driving through my veins, making my voice increase in volume and conviction. "I told you once that you were the most important thing in my life. I meant it. And it's still true. It will always be true. No matter what happens. And so I'm here. I followed you, to reason with you, to beg you to come back to me. You tried to do the same, didn't you? Back in September? Well, here I am, Bella."

"Don't even think about equating your actions with mine." She hissed the words through clenched teeth. I was the cause of this anger but on this one occasion, I refused to accept it. For once we were equals and I had to make her see that.

"I will equate my actions with yours, and yours with mine," I said quietly. "For the first time, I have the right to do that. I have been... the most arrogant, assuming jerk on the face of the planet, for as long as I've known you. But you changed all that, Bella. You've made us equals, finally. Which in reality is... oh, it's all I've ever wanted."

I raised my arms in an expression of defeat, feeling the shackles of a century fall from my wrists. The freedom of knowing that nothing mattered except the woman in front of me was exhilarating. I could feel a beatific smile stretch across my face as I revelled in it.

"In this moment, it doesn't matter that I'm a hundred-and-eight year old vampire, that you're an eighteen year old human, that I could kill you with a flick of my fingers, that you could overwhelm me with a drop of your blood. I'm standing here because I'm not trying to make this conversation easier by dazzling you into submission, and any temptation from your side is completely overwhelmed by the scent of the boy behind you."

I hoped she understood. I hoped she could sense my conviction. I hoped she could see how much I loved her, how much she had changed me.

My voice lowered now, and I injected my words with as much intensity as I could. This was the most important moment in my entire life.

"All that matters, Bella, is that I love you so much I would die for you, and you've proved, over and over, that the same is true for you." I said it quietly, the most honest words I had ever spoken.

"We love each other. No matter what else has happened, I have to believe that that's still true. I don't know what you've been doing here all day and I don't care. No matter what you decide or where you want to go from here, I am yours."

A strange unity began to form in my mind as I accepted the truth of that statement. Man and monster. Pensioner and teenager. In any and every incarnation, I belonged to her utterly. If I had a soul – if the thing inside that loved her more intensely than my own life could be called my soul – well, it was hers.

"I've tried to deny it and I've tried to fight against it, and now for the first time since I met you, I'm just going to accept it. You own me, body and soul." Something within me frowned as that revelation – the admission of the existence of my soul - slipped past my lips, unbidden, unplanned, but I brushed it off. Now was not the time.

"You have a choice." My voice was little more than a whisper. "You can take the easy option, bury your feelings under anger like you've been doing since we got back from Italy and turn your back on this. Or you can decide that we are stronger than that. That we can work this out, together."

She shook her head, and I could see the turmoil within her manifest itself on her beautiful features. I could see her struggling, and I ached, but ultimately loved her all the more for it. For the confirmation of her humanity. Warts and all.

"Whatever you decide..." I stopped, swallowed hard, as the realisation that it was entirely possible for her decision to go either way sunk in.

"Whatever you decide, you have to know that. I can step back and I can be a gentleman, but you have to know that I will always love you. Always want you. Always need you. Never doubt that you hold as much power over me as I do over you. If you continue down the road you're on, it will be the end of me. And so I'm asking you once more. Come back to me."

I took a deep breath and felt my body shudder as everything in me cried out, once more, to touch her. To graze my thumb along her cheekbone. To smell her hair. To kiss her eyelids. To nuzzle her cheek. This temptation, this overpowering need, was worse than any bloodlust I had ever faced.

But I would overcome it. For her. For us.

I smiled again, and my shoulders fell as my final epiphany came crashing down on me. Nothing mattered to me so long as she was happy. My fate was in her hands, and I could do nothing more to change it. It was all her. I could hope for an outcome that I knew would make me deliriously happy but I accepted, once and for all, that it was entirely her decision. If she chose to come back to me, I would spend the rest of my life trying to make her as happy as she made me every day. If she didn't, I would do the same, but from a distance. It really was that simple. Not easy, but very simple.

"I will spend the rest of my life trying to make things right between us. I will undergo every test you can throw at me. I will walk through fire, if that's what it takes. Whatever you want from me, you can have, Bella. And I, in return, only ask you this. Give me the opportunity to show you how much I love you. Come back to me."

My gaze swept her features lovingly. I would not allow myself to communicate my absolute dependence on her through touch, and so I tried my hardest to inject all of the emotions I felt for her into that one glance, and into my voice as I finished.

"I'm going to leave now," I said softly, "and I'm going to hunt, because physically I can't wait any longer. But know I won't be far. I never will be. And I will always, always return to you."

I took a step backwards. She was mute – immobile. Stunned.

"When you decide," I whispered quietly, "*whatever* you decide... you know where to find me."

I moved away, still refusing to turn my back to her, to break the connection between our eyes.

Suddenly her eyes widened and her heartbeat began to thud erratically. My body tensed as I registered the fact that she was frightened.

And then, suddenly, she wasn't the only one. For the air around me vibrated with the angry cries of the wolf pack, and their minds tickled the edges of my self-consciousness, informing me of one thing and one thing alone.

My imminent destruction.

--


	8. Saviour

"Alas that love, so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!"

~ Benvolio, "Romeo & Juliet", Act I Sc I

--

Breathe.

Just keep breathing.

In. Out. In. Out.

My chest moved jerkily. At some stage the unconscious centre of my brain took over and I had one less thing to concentrate on.

My self-control was fraying rapidly. I was still, silent. My arms were locked around my elbows as if to hold my body in place. I was worried that if I moved, if I discovered that my muscles still worked and my bones still did a fairly decent job of holding me up, I just might lose it.

Everything had changed. Everything and nothing.

I was rocked to my core, and I was so afraid that even the tiniest movement on my part would kick my brain back into action and result in me doing something exceptionally stupid.

Like laughing. Or crying. Or maybe screaming.

Silently, seamlessly, the pack had surrounded us. Hemming us in. Trapping us together. I recognised the bulk of Paul, prowling restlessly behind Edward, and the impassive grey mountain that was Sam, poised for attack.

All hope left me at this. Jacob I could reason with, but there was no fighting against Sam's immobility.

But that didn't mean I couldn't try.

I finally found my voice. It seemed like it had been years since I'd last spoken.

"This is between us," I croaked, directing my words to Sam. "Please. Please just leave this to me."

Edward's eyes had never once left mine. Resignation glimmered in their depths, but try as I might I could not see a trace of regret.

"That isn't the way they look at it, Bella," he said quietly, sadly. "I broke the treaty. And now I have to face the consequences."

I turned to glare at Jacob, who had since phased, almost where he stood. "Do something!" I pleaded. I had intended my words to burst forth on a flood of anger, but my voice sounded very small and scared. Even to me.

"There's nothing he can do. He's not the Alpha." Edward's voice was gentle. I wondered just how much he was putting up with behind his calm mask. I was unreasonably terrified just by the sight of the wolves. I could not begin to imagine the thoughts that were lancing through their collective mind.

Something brushed past me, and I shrieked, my heart pounding in fear. I turned to see Jacob's reddish-brown bulk, moving into position between Edward and me, his eyes liquid pools begging for my cooperation.

Closing the circle. Hemming him in. Cutting me out.

I snarled, and the sound, so feral, shocked the living hell out of me. Reaching out a hand I quite literally smacked Jacob on the nose – the one sensitive part of his body. He yelped, and in his momentary lapse of concentration, I slipped through the tightening noose forming around Edward and stood, once more, where I belonged. Between him and the pack.

"He hasn't hurt anyone." I appealed directly to Sam now, desperate. "The only reason he's even here is me. Spare him. Have some mercy and we'll leave right now, right this minute."

A long, long silence stretched over the tiny yard.

My body was trembling with the force of my fear. I could feel Edward behind me, the chill of him reaching out to embrace me. I never would have believed that cold could be so comforting. At the very least, it confirmed his presence.

No gesture from Sam broke the tension. There was no softening in his eyes, no relaxing of his rigid posture. We were balancing on a knife edge, all of us. I knew that if the wolves attacked, Edward would not have the strength to fight them off – he still hadn't fed, after all.

I also knew that if there was any way to avert disaster, it lay with me. I trusted these men. They had protected me once and they would do so again. Surely I could make them see sense. The alternative was unthinkable. Edward had just risked his life to fight for me, and I would reciprocate his gesture with everything in me if the occasion called for it.

"Bella." A cold hand touched my shoulder, and I nearly wept from the relief his touch brought. "Bella. It's okay."

I tore my gaze away from Sam, my eyes finding Edward's, begging him for a solution. Begging him to make this better somehow.

"It's okay," he said again, smiling softly at me. His hand reached up to brush against my cheek. "Sam is telling me to tell you that it's all going to be okay."

I eyed him suspiciously. Surely it couldn't be that easy. Surely there would be another obstacle in our path, another hoop for us to jump through.

His eyes held mine and I could not detect any guile in them. There was not even the slightest iota of it.

I breathed again. Nodded my head warily.

The circle around us broke into pieces, and I began to relax. These were my friends, after all. These were the men who had saved me from a hostile vampire not six months ago. This was Jacob's family. Anything connected with him had to be pure and good.

I turned towards the house, intent on retrieving my clothes and leaving this place before disaster could choose to strike once more.

And my eyes fell upon my best friend's downcast head.

As if pulled by an invisible string, his eyes rose and locked on mine.

Edward was skilled at hiding his emotions. He was over a century old and he'd had that long to practice the facade. A century of days and hours in which to perfect it.

Jacob did not have that same luxury. Jacob's eyes were truly the windows of his soul, and right now they were filled with... with...

With guilt. And with a silent warning, a hidden plea.

Jacob knew something I didn't.

I swivelled around to my original position as fast as I could.

The second my attention had diverted from him, Edward had moved away from me. Shielding me with his back, he held a proud and unapologetic posture, his chest unprotected, his palms held upward in a gesture of defeat.

And Paul – Paul, the one member of the pack I'd always been slightly wary of – was crouched low to the ground, prepared to strike.

Everything slowed down. I felt as though I was looking at the entire, sick scene through the wrong end of a telescope.

And Edward was all that mattered. He always had been, he always would be.

It was so ironic, I thought dazedly to myself, that it was only on the edge of disaster that I realised how important he was to me. It had happened in the forest last September, it had happened in Italy and it was happening now.

In the weakness of everyday life I could pretend that other options existed for me. In my vain conviction that I would always have time to heal properly and to move on, I could afford to be lazy. I had pushed him away because the thought of battling through the pain he'd caused was overwhelming. Even if I'd known, secretly, that the reward would far outstrip the cost.

I had not been brave enough to face the situation head-on, like a grown up. Childishly I had buried my feelings under layers of anger and pain. I had run from the only one I would ever love, sought refuge with a man I knew cared for me. Manipulated them both. Forced Edward into risking his life to come to me. Forced Jacob into this awful stalemate between his best friend and his family.

My brain was working at a lightning-fast pace. And I knew my fate. Even as I watched Paul's haunches quiver in anticipation, I knew what I had to do.

Despite my newfound urgency, my limbs felt like they were moving through wet cement. A soundless cry tore itself free from my throat as I propelled my entire weight forwards. I would not be fast enough, strong enough, I was sure of it...

And yet, somehow, I was.

My body collided with Edward's back, and somehow – maybe because of the sheer unexpected nature of it, maybe because his senses were so highly attuned to what was about to happen right in front of him, and maybe just because he had sacrificed his strength to come and talk to me – somehow my only love, my perfect vampire stumbled forward.

My nails scrabbled wildly at his shoulders and neck, but could find no purchase in his stony skin. The momentum of his involuntary action, combined with my own meager velocity meant that as his body slid forwards, mine followed, my torso hanging over his shoulder, my back exposed.

Seconds later, as if in a dream I felt a blazing force slam into me and the three of us – vampire, werewolf and human – fell to the ground in a tangle of fur and limbs.

My vision began to blur.

The last thing I heard before the world went completely dark was Edward's voice, screaming my name.

--


	9. Fragility

Light up, light up,

As if you have a choice,

Even if you cannot hear my voice

I'll be right beside you dear...

"Run", Snow Patrol.

--

EPOV

I was not thinking about very much when I faced my own death for the second time in a week. I could see and hear the wolf pack around me, but only as part of the background. A tumult of thoughts washed over me but did not wash me away. Nothing could distract me from the woman standing beside me, trying desperately to save my life.

When I spoke softly to her, convincing her to step down from her defensive pose, I was not attempting to trick her. Sam's authoritative voice had assured me that this was the easiest way, the only way. He did not want Bella to become any more involved in this, and neither did I. He was not about to be swayed by pleas on either of our parts. The inevitable resolution was firm in his mind.

And so I did what was necessary. I repeated Sam's thoughts to her. I did what I'd sworn to never do again. I lied to her, tricked her, hid the truth behind a carefully constructed veil.

Lied, but only by omission. After all, Sam *was* telling me to tell her that everything was going to be okay, and the fact that his reassurance was false was his burden to bear, not mine.

I saw her trust in her eyes, and loathed myself for betraying it yet again. I wondered what I would do if ever I looked at her and saw that she no longer believed in me, that I had finally hurt her too badly for her to find faith in my lies.

Then I remembered that my time on earth was ticking steadily towards its close, that I would never have to face her anger for this final act of stupidity, that her undeserving loyalty to me – to the man she'd always believed I was – was one final gift, the last she could ever give me.

In these closing moments I drank her in, the trembling lines of her neck, the fire in her eyes, her fluid movements as she spun towards the house. A thousand years would not be enough to pay homage to how her simplest gesture undid me entirely. The power of her intense fragility left me breathless, her petite frame and soft bones belying her immense inner strength. I would never have enough time to tell her all she made me feel.

My life was flashing before my eyes – the final cliché. And I realised, yet again, that I had been nothing without her. The images that spun out in my panicked brain were taken, without exception, from the past year and a half. Every moment we'd shared was there, every kiss, every touch that shot me through with warmth.

She would be the last thing I saw in this life, seared forever into my unseeing eyes, a beauty I did not deserve.

She would not be all right after this – possibly she would never be all right again – but she would have Jacob, she would have her father, her mother. Air would continue to move in and out of her lungs. The world would be restored to its natural order.

I was no longer naive enough to believe that she would be better off without me. The power of the love we shared was, in its own way, a tragedy. We were irreversibly linked, a poisonous vine twisting round an apple tree, impossible to separate without causing harm to both.

I cringed at the notion of causing her even more pain, but comforted myself, selfishly, with the idea that she would, at least, continue to breathe. That she would one day smile again. She had always been so much stronger than me. Where I saw black despair, she saw hope, or at least the prospect of it. I knew she could survive this.

Bella would live.

With this in mind, I closed my eyes and spun to face the wolves. I could feel now what I'd been ignoring for days, even weeks – the lingering heaviness of fatigue in my muscles, an unstable trembling in my lower limbs. I knew I would not be capable of escaping. I opened my arms, held my palms flat, surrendering. I would not fight this.

I knew one or other of the wolves were preparing to spring at me, yet I was not braced for it. This would be over much more quickly if I did not resist in any way.

And so, when a body of infinite softness and warmth hit me hard in the back, I was not prepared for it. In one single, stupid gesture, I stumbled forwards. My eyes shot open but did not see anything. A mass of dark hair was obscuring my vision.

A clawing, scrabbling fear broke loose in my belly as I attempted to right us before disaster struck, but it was no use. Bella's body slid violently forwards over my shoulder, and as my hands finally, mercifully locked around her kneecaps, preventing her from falling head-first onto the packed earth, her hair released me.

The last thing I saw before everything became chaos again was a large, loathsome paw, claws extended, ripping through the fabric of her shirt.

The smell of blood filled the air instantly. My screams echoed in my ears.

The world was a flurry of snapping and snarling, slavering teeth and rancid fur. We were falling backwards and I was pushing, with all my strength, in the direction of the wolf – fearing that if his full weight were to land on us, Bella's spine would snap in half.

And suddenly that didn't matter anymore. The scent of the wolf no longer choked my nostrils. As we fell, Jacob sprang at his pack brother, colliding with his side, tumbling him off us and tearing his claws from the soft flesh of Bella's back.

I managed to get an arm behind us in the seconds before my stone form slammed into her fragile legs, bracing myself against earth, shooting out from under her, yanking her forwards to survey the extent of the damage. My body shook and for the first time in more than a century I felt the distinct and unpleasant sensation of nausea.

Her back was a mess of blood. It dripped off her, soaking into the earth, and still more gushed forth from the five deep, jagged wounds that extended from her shoulder blade to the small of her back. My fingers searched her neck, found a thready pulse and I nearly wept in equal parts relief and terror.

Moments ago I had bemoaned the fact that I was much too weak to escape from this nest of disaster. When it was my life on the line I could not summon the strength to run. With Bella, it never even occurred to me not to.

I gathered her in my arms, her angel bones, her slackened mouth, her blank face, and broke straight through the circle of wolves. Not caring about anything except getting her to safety. They did not resist or make any movement to stop me and I did not pause to wonder why.

I hurtled through the forest at breakneck speed, pushing my limbs faster and faster with each second. Bella's blood soaked my arms, my shirt, my jeans, and yet even in my weakened state I felt absolutely no urge to drink.

I had always known that my love for her eclipsed every prior emotion I'd ever had. Now I knew it also overcame every physical need I had once judged to be essential to my existence.

I was in sight of the treaty line now. I nearly sobbed in gratitude when I picked up the familiar timbre of my father's thoughts.

The second my feet passed over that loathsome boundary, my family were surrounding me, each and every mind filled with panic. As their senses picked up the smell of blood, they retreated as quickly until only Carlisle and Alice remained.

"Carlisle, take her, get her to a hospital," I gasped aloud, my chest heaving with breaths I did not need. His arms reached out and I handed Bella to him.

The second her warmth left my skin my knees buckled.

Another failure.

I lay face down in the dirt, Alice's hands on my shoulders, her frantic words buzzing in my ears. I could not make sense of them and so I concentrated only on the sound of Bella's heartbeat moving away, growing weaker and weaker and finally disappearing entirely from the range of my hearing.

"Emmett," I rasped weakly. God, I could barely lift my head, barely focus my eyes on my burly brother whose muscular arms reached towards me in a helpless gesture of impotence. Understanding flared in his amber eyes and within seconds he had vanished deep into the woods, heading towards the drumming of hooves we could all hear in the distance.

As I waited, I drifted, far away in a perfect dream of a life which was good and pure, where horror never touched our existence and where Bella stood, her soft arms outstretched, her warm scent and tender kisses welcoming me home.

--

BPOV

Pain.

It ripped through me, spreading all over my body, setting me on fire. I was not a cognisant creature. Agony was all I was aware of, dictating my every response, overwhelming all the rules of human conduct that had once governed me.

I reflexively arched my back to escape the red-hot poker scoring blisters into my flesh, and wailed aloud as the throbbing torture only increased.

The unwelcome sensations brought a shattering clarity to my brain and I was suddenly hyper-aware of my surroundings. I was lying on my stomach and yet lights were still stabbing my eyes. Many hands held me down, stopped my movements, poked and prodded at my skin.

I wanted to scream at their owners, examining me so clinically while I lay choked in such agony, but nothing escaped my mouth except a mangled groan.

I couldn't remember what had happened. I could barely remember my own name.

Suddenly the pain I'd felt before multiplied exponentially, flipped on its head, forming new connections and pathways in my nerves, all the better to hurt me with. Needles pricked the crook of my arm but no drug was enough to still the agony in my back, the feeling of dragging flesh, of wounds being stitched with coarse black thread.

Someone was speaking, as if from very far away. "Just hold on," they were telling me, and again I wanted to scream. Why did they want me to endure such torment? Surely there was nothing in the world worth this.

With that a face bloomed into my subconscious. It flickered across my mind's eye. I could make out a few definite features – a strong jaw, a straight nose, a pair of tortured eyes. It was recognisable for an instant, and then it dissolved. But the feeling it incited, hazy as it was, shot me through with strength.

There it was. My reason.

Suddenly the drugs hit me like a battering ram, stilling my movements and dragging me deep into my body. I wailed quietly as the world fell away.

--

I was drifting for an interminable time. Thoughts and feelings lapped gently at the surface of my brain, never quite breaking through. I was euphoric, peaceful. Nothing made sense and so nothing hurt. Nothing anchored me to earth, not even my own heavy body.

Slowly, very slowly, I could feel random sensations reaching out through the sea of my sluggish consciousness. Occasionally a beeping noise made itself known, drilling through to my brain. Sometimes I even counted the beeps before sinking back down.

Colours swirled before me, organising themselves into random, spiralling patterns. I lay quietly, peaceably enjoying the show. Patiently waiting for things to make sense.

The beeping broke through again, stronger than ever. I concentrated on it, focusing on a new quality I could hear in the sound. Yes – there was something else there, something else making itself known, winding itself around the beat, weaving with the ugly sound, making it part of the music.

Music. I knew music. I knew *this* music in particular.

Slowly I searched my brain for the reference. I knew this piece, knew every note as it fell gently into place. It was important to me.

Gradually I was coming back to myself. Flashes of random memories blazed through my brain. A cafeteria, the inside of a dark truck. The taste of fresh fish, the warmth of sunshine on my shoulders.

A man in a police cruiser, telling me he was glad to see me. Light through the trees, glinting off reddish-brown hair. The feeling of wind in my face, of excitement uncoiling slowly in the pit of my stomach...

The melody, that had been forming such a sweet backdrop to my wandering thoughts, broke off suddenly. I could locate my face now and so I frowned unhappily. That wasn't the ending I'd been waiting for.

A voice sweeter than honey was whispering in my ears. Dimly I made sense of the words. "Come back," it was saying. "Come back to me."

That plea, in that voice, was so familiar. I could not connect it to a living person, could not link it with a memory, but I loved that sound. It was a part of me. The marrow in my bones responded to it.

The music started again, but it was slower than before, more hopeless. There were tears festering in the throat that sang, choking the tune. It wasn't long till it stopped entirely, broke off at a different point.

I could hear quiet sobbing, but I could not connect it to anything or anyone and so it was not important. All that was important in that moment was that the song was completed, that the notes formed that familiar bridge which would lull me quietly back to sleep.

I licked my dry lips, concentrating, forced moisture down my throat. Sound croaked out of me.

My feeble attempt at song was not at all in tune – was barely recognisable as an attempt – yet it seemed to do the trick. I felt a slight pressure against my cheek and then the music was back.

I relaxed and let my lips part in a blissful smile, let my body and my mind fall back into lassitude. Now I knew. Everything would be all right.

--

Heavy.

Everything was so heavy. My cheek resting against the grain of a pillow. The weight of the blankets covering my lower legs. The throbbing ache centred in my body. I couldn't move. My brain was slow and stupid.

I managed to heft my eyelids open for a nanosecond. They fell closed just as quickly. The next time was easier, the next easier still. Finally I was able to force them back far enough in my head to focus my irises.

My cheek was resting on my hands, folded as if in prayer, like a child's. They were definitely my hands – I could feel my fingers twitch against my skin as my body slowly re-booted itself. But something else was there, right next to me, something that overwhelmed my visual field and yet made no sense. Something bronze and tousled.

Summoning all of my strength, I managed to brush the backs of my fingers lightly across it. It was so soft...

It moved, and suddenly, just like that, everything fell into place.

Edward was nestled as close to me as he could possibly get without physically lying on the bed. His head shot up at the feeling of my hand in his hair and a pair of golden eyes locked onto mine. That's odd, my mind observed, but the thought flitted away in the face of this feeling that was so much more important.

I felt an idiotic, blurry smile spread itself across my face.

"Edward," I croaked, and then winced. My mouth was so dry, my throat so scratchy. I licked my cracked lips.

In a second, his hand was holding something to my lips. Something that tickled pleasantly. I opened my mouth and a trickle of water flowed into it.

The moisture disappeared, vanished down my throat. I moaned in protest. I could see the object now – a simple cotton bud. I watched impatiently as he threw it aside, picked up another that he dipped into a cup of water and wiped across my lips.

He continued until the small cup was empty. He had not said a word, but his every gesture was laced with tenderness.

I couldn't think of anything but how happy I was to be in his presence.

I opened my mouth, experimenting. "You're here." The sound was unintelligible to my own ears, my voice so weak and rough, but he must have understood because he leaned forward and brushed a butterfly kiss across my cheek.

"Where else would I be?" He murmured the words against my skin, and I hummed happily.

The euphoria of the painkiller made everything seem light and easy. I knew I was grinning like a fool and I knew I didn't care.

"Edward," I whispered again, and his eyes met mine. Golden, they were definitely golden, that beautiful shade I loved so much. How did that happen, I wondered, but again, the question slipped away before I could vocalise it.

I giggled inanely as a fractured reel of images spun through my head.

"You crossed the treaty line for me," I said happily.

Something darted across his face, and he nodded, warily.

"You're an idiot," I whispered, beaming at him. My eyelids were getting all droopy again, but I could see the corner of his mouth quirk up and the ever so slight nod of his head.

I managed one more thing before the heaviness of morphine overwhelmed my limbs. "I kind of like it."

His quiet chuckle shook the bed and rocked me back to unconsciousness.

--


	10. Blind

O, how can Love's eye be true,

That is so vex'd with watching and with tears?

No marvel then though I mistake my view,

The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.

~ "Sonnet 148", William Shakespeare

--

Her heart was racing.

She lay, still and pale on her stomach in the bed, and yet her heart could have rivalled that of a marathon runner.

"Bella?" I said quietly, touching her cheek. "Are you awake?"

A whimper escaped from her lips and a single tear leaked from the corner of her eye. I winced, hating the thought of her in pain.

"Edward," she whispered.

My heart broke. "I'm here."

"Edward... want me, please want me... I can't bear... You..."

A dry sob escaped my mouth and I cupped my hand gently around her cheek.

"Bella, wake up. You're having a nightmare." My voice trembled. I could not stop it.

Bella's father had finally arrived and was sitting on the other side of her bed, his hand resting lightly on his daughter's ankle. He looked up at me and I was momentarily disconcerted by his eyes – the exact same shade of brown.

"This happens every time she goes to sleep." His voice was neither particularly accusatory nor filled with the hatred I so richly deserved. His words and his mind were both weary. Seeing his baby go through so much pain, even in her unconscious moments, could not have been easy.

Bella's head twitched on the pillow, her hands grasping at the empty sheets. "Edward," she muttered again, a frown creasing her lovely face.

"Bella." I shook her shoulder gently, just once. "Bella, I'm here."

And then it happened. She gave a great, gasping sob, and opened her eyes. Our gazes connected for the briefest of seconds, and then hers were shut tight again, screwed up. Her hands rose to clutch at her face and she shook her head fiercely.

"Not really here... just a dream..." she murmured, too quietly for her father to hear.

"I'm here, Bella," I promised. "I'm right here." I touched her clammy fingers, wove my own through them, squeezing gently.

Her eyes opened, and faster than even I could anticipate, before anyone could intervene, she rolled from her stomach to lie flat on her back.

Charlie's arms, as well as my own, reached out to prevent it but we were both too late. A hiss of pain escaped her as her full weight came to bear on her injuries – as her stitches dragged her skin. Her eyes squeezed shut and her hand spasmed in mine. I shook with silent tears.

She moaned and blinked rapidly. I watched as her hazy eyes focused and became clear. Watched as she recognised both of us, simultaneously.

"Ow," she said weakly, and smiled at us. My throat closed. I could tell from Charlie's pained swallow that his had reacted in a similar fashion.

"Dad," she gasped out, her gaze riveted on her father's.

"Yeah, kid, I'm here," he choked gruffly. I did not have to look to know that his eyes were swimming.

She seemed to deliberate on his statement for a few moments, watching us watch her, before smiling timidly and squeezing my hand – just gently. I could see that she'd done the exact same to Charlie's. We both beamed at her.

She smiled back. It was watery and weak, pain brimming just below the surface, but it was the single bravest thing I'd ever seen anyone do in all my years of existence.

"What happened?" she asked quietly, looking at both of us. A tendril of worry snaked into my brain. Had she hit her head? Or was she just aware of the necessity to play along with the cover story?

Charlie swept a few strands of hair from her sweaty forehead. "Don't you remember, kiddo?" he asked, and his voice was all concern.

She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut as if to quell a headache. My worry increased.

I smiled at her sadly, delivering the cover story my family had cooked up for us.

"We went for a hike in the woods, to clear things up," I said gently, ignoring Charlie's snort of derision, "and

ended up going a little off the beaten track. We stumbled right across the path of a rather large brown bear. It slashed your back open. Luckily for us, it retreated when we did."

She swallowed, her eyes conveying the depth of her understanding. "I guess I'm a little fuzzy from the painkillers," she murmured, and shook her head gently a few times, as if trying to clear water from her ears.

Charlie eyed me. "Edward got you to Carlisle and they brought you in," he said quietly, his thumb stroking across his daughter's knuckles, his voice rough with emotion. "If – if you'd been alone, if he hadn't happened to be nearby..."

"It's okay, Dad. I'm okay."

Here I interceded. "You're not, actually." I could not control my emotions and so the words came out almost thoughtfully, almost as if we were having a meaningless conversation. "You have five deep lacerations going almost the length of your back. And we need to turn you over to lie on your stomach. When you landed on your back just now I'm sure you almost ripped your stitches."

She swallowed, and I could see that she knew this part would hurt. "All right." Her voice was barely a whimper.

My hands immediately went around her, one cradling the crook of her knees, one supporting the nape of her neck. I lifted her as easily as a child – straight up in the air, not worrying about Charlie's latent marvelling at my strength as he fussed to straighten the bedclothes.

Slowly, so slowly, I laid her on her side on the bed. I used every bit of my vampiric strength and dexterity to make the movement as smooth as possible, but still it caused her to cringe, then whiten as the sharp movement aggravated her wound even further.

When the curve of her shoulder and hip both met the firm mattress, I carefully rolled her so that she came to rest on her stomach. She exhaled sharply, closed her eyes in pain.

I laid my hand gently on top of hers.

"Can you ask one of the nurses to come in and increase her morphine?" I asked her father quietly.

His reply was instantaneous. "No I damn well can't. Ask one yourself on your way out of here." He glared at me, and I could see the effort it took him to keep his voice quiet.

I closed my eyes, rubbed at the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. "Chief Swan, I appreciate that you're angry with me, but I really think that Bella needs..."

He interrupted. "I don't want to hear what you think Bella needs, you self-righteous little shit. You weren't so concerned this past year, were you? You didn't even grace her with a goddamned phone call. The only reason I haven't thrown you bodily from the room before now is because I still have some respect for your father. Now get out, and don't let me catch you anywhere near my daughter again."

I opened my mouth to protest, but something stopped me. Something weak and beseeching as the mewl of a newborn kitten.

I bent towards her lips, searching her face worriedly. "Bella? Did you say something?"

A tiny whimper made its way out of her body. Ignoring the barely-restrained snarling of her father, I rested my hands gently on her back, knowing that the iciness of my flesh would act as a balm against her pain.

"Edward," she mumbled, and I could see her fighting to overcome the twin fogs of drugs and sleepiness. She had fought against so much and still she had not given up. I bent down to place my face next to hers, contorting my body in the effort to get closer.

"What is it, love?" I crooned softly.

Her eyelids blinked, trembling.

"You... you have to leave," she whispered, and my entire body froze up in disbelief. She didn't mean it. She couldn't.

I stared at her, nonplussed.

"Bella," I murmured agonisingly, and watched in fear as she shook her beautiful head.

"Please, Edward, for Charlie. For me. Don't put him through anything else today. Just... just leave, just for a little while. Give us some space."

I swallowed. "Okay," I mumbled.

I glanced up once to her father's angry face, then decided I just didn't care. Leaning down I brushed a kiss against her soft cheek.

"I love you, Bella." The words emerged on a sobbed breath.

Quickly I stood and turned for the door. My hand was grasping the handle when I heard the rustle of bedclothes as she moved her head to a more comfortable position.

Words softer than flower petals and tender as a kiss wafted across the empty air between us. "Love you," she sighed into the pillow.

I wasn't sure whether she meant me or her father, but those two words nearly undid me entirely.

Summoning the last of my strength, I exited quickly and went to find Alice.

--

The wheelchair moved over the uneven ground, its movements jerky and disjointed. I was biting the inside of my cheek viciously to stop myself from crying out in pain. Over my head, Charlie chatted obliviously with the nurse. I had to smile. He'd always been a sucker for brunettes.

With a few erratic movements I heaved myself out of the chair and into the front seat of the cruiser, leaving it to my father to make our goodbyes. He joined me soon after and jammed the keys in the ignition.

I had never appreciated the joys of a good suspension before this. The car's motion was relatively smooth and bump-free. The fact that Charlie was driving as if he had a load of fragile eggs balanced on the roof helped matters. I could not imagine what this same journey in the truck would have done to me. As it was, every shift of my weight in the seat caused another spike of pain to travel the length of my back.

The trip to the house was mercifully short. My father filled the space between us with nervous chatter. His relief at having me out of the hospital was palpable.

I smiled inwardly. Charlie and I had always had an easy relationship, and the main reason was just that I knew the love he felt for me behind his uncomfortable fatherhood was genuine.

We pulled into the empty driveway. I glanced at my father and frowned as I noticed the pucker between his eyes.

"What's wrong, Dad?" I asked lightly, figuring some domestic worry was troubling him.

He shook his head. "I guess I was expecting to see that damn Volvo parked up to welcome you home."

A dart of pain that had nothing to do with my back impaled my chest. I turned to stare out the window.

"Lucky for him it isn't, right?" I asked, injecting a note of false humour into my voice, hoping to mask the dull edge.

"Damn lucky is right," Charlie growled. From the corner of my eye I could see him dart a glance at me, sizing me up. He nodded approvingly once and despite myself, my heart clenched.

--

Every window in the house was open. I lay on the couch, flat on my stomach, with my cheek pressed against the cushion. I could feel the rough material leaving lines on my face and I just didn't care.

It was so hot. The heat in Phoenix had often been oppressive, but this was something different again. The humidity was like an extra force weighing my body down. I felt slow and sluggish. My body was drugged into inactivity, clammy and sweaty, my hair sticking to my forehead. Every window in the house was open and still my breath escaped in huffs.

I closed my eyes and allowed myself to imagine, just for a minute, the iciness of Edward's flesh enveloping me, holding me, chasing my discomfort away.

If I called out for him, he would come.

I'd asked him to leave, to give both my father and I some room to breathe, and I knew he'd honour that request.

But I could make the decision to call, right now. I wouldn't even have to move. I wouldn't even have to pick up the phone. Alice would know, she would tell Edward, and within moments I would see him again.

My hand fell limply to hang off the couch. I swallowed hard.

So much had happened to us in the space of a week. I'd been put through the emotional wringer, and I couldn't handle any more right away.

I needed to be away from him and everything he made me feel for a little while. I couldn't think straight around him. I was always too busy trying not to throw myself headfirst into his arms. And I knew I didn't want that. At least, not yet.

First I wanted to be stubborn and stupid and human – I wanted to self-destruct and put myself back together. I wanted to throw my hard-won maturity out the window, to forget the angst and the worry and the imminent disaster looming over me constantly and just... act like an irresponsible teenager for once. I was so tired of being an adult.

And at the back of my mind, I knew all of these impulses led right back to Edward. I wanted to test his patience, his endurance, his love. I wanted to push him to his limits with my childishness, to try and force him not to love me through stupid actions, and I wanted to go back at the end of it all to find that it hadn't worked. That despite my flaws and my stupid notions, he still loved me, still wanted me and welcomed me back.

I knew it wasn't right, knew it was selfish as hell, twisted and wrong, but I wanted it nonetheless.

I wanted...

Oh Jesus, I didn't know what the hell I wanted.

It was so goddamned hot. My body was sticky, uncomfortable. Sweat was making its way slowly from the nape of my neck to the small of my back, soaking the bandages that bound me from my collarbones to my naval.

Slowly, stiffly, I raised my body off the couch and pulled my shirt over my head, huffing as strands of hair stuck to my damp forehead. The slashes on my back were so extensive that they required ridiculous amounts of dressings. My chest and upper stomach were completely bound up, my diaphragm struggling to move, my lungs never quite full of air.

The bandages served multiple purposes. They kept my torso from moving too much as well as wrapping me uncomfortably into a hot and sweaty hell.

I closed my eyes and imagined my body slipping into a sparkling pool of cold water, imagined cool kitchen tiles beneath my feet and ice-cream slipping frigidly down my throat... Imagined a pair of strong arms cradling me against an icy chest...

My fingers acted wholly of their own accord, drifting up to graze against the smooth plastic of the house phone. A beat, and it was in my hand.

I stared at it, and then my fingers were dialling, dialling a number I knew by heart – had always known.

I made it about halfway through before a timid knock reverberated through the house.

Sighing, I hit cancel. Obviously it wasn't meant to be. I twisted my body, crawling off the couch to stand, and peered out through the mesh of the screen door.

Jake.

I pushed all of my errant thoughts and latent feelings about Edward out of my head, and went to greet my best friend.

--

He was a stranger standing on my porch. His face was drawn in lines of misery, his shoulders hunched in supplication. His glossy black hair was matted to his head with sweat. In my arms he held an unidentifiable bundle, cradling it protectively.

I moved slowly towards the door, conscious of the dragging pain in my back that came every time I flexed my body. I pasted a smile on my face and opened the door.

His eyes flashed to mine and dropped as quickly. "Hi, Bella," he muttered, shifting his feet. His uneasiness was apparent.

"Jake." I smiled at him. "I'm glad you're here. Those my clothes?"

"Yeah." He handed them over, swallowed hard.

I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead, exhaling. "Hot enough for you?" I asked flippantly.

His eyes were centred somewhere decidedly south of my face. I looked down at myself and understanding flashed through me as I took in my partial nudity. The wrappings were so tight and bulky around me that my modesty was completely preserved – still it was not lost on me that for the second time in less than a fortnight, the shape of my breasts was painfully apparent to Jacob.

"Kinda gruesome, isn't it?" I smiled ruefully, my forefinger rubbing lightly against the rough material covering my ribs.

I could hear his swallow.

I ignored his apparent discomfort. "Want to come in?"

His tongue flashed out to moisten his lips.

"I shouldn't," he said, and his voice was infused with shame.

I rolled my eyes at him. "Please tell me you're not feeling guilty about what happened."

His eyes tightened, and I groaned. How had I managed to surround myself with such ridiculous men?

"Of course I am, Bella," he said bleakly. "You were on my land, with my family. I should have known better – should have intervened, done something..."

I shook my head. "It's okay. I'm not even that hurt. And it all worked out, right? I mean, I assume any hint of imminent war is at least postponed. Have the pack come to a decision about what to do about Edward?"

He exhaled roughly, ran his free hand through his hair. "We haven't really... discussed it. We're all so ashamed, Bella. We're supposed to be the good ones, yet we're the ones who hurt you. The... your back... you were bleeding so so heavily and the leech still managed to abstain from drinking, still got you to a hospital. I don't know what would have happened if..."

He broke off and cleared his throat, looking away. Blood pooled in his cheeks. I wanted to hug him.

"We all let our prejudices run away with us a little," he continued shamefacedly. "None of us were thinking rationally. But now we are, and I don't think anybody will have to worry about a war. I think we'll be content to leave sleeping dogs lie." He paused, then smiled. "Pardon the pun."

I grinned at him. "I'm sure the Cullens will be also. That's so great. No epic supernatural war. Woohoo!"

He looked at me a little strangely, then a grin broke over his face. "Woohoo indeed," he said tenderly, and reached forwards to brush a lock of hair out of my eyes.

I stepped closer to his body and wrapped my arms lightly around his neck. His own came up and cradled me to him, gently, avoiding the bandages on my back. I leant my head on his chest, closed my eyes.

For once his warmth was unwelcome, choking me further, but I refused to care about something so insignificant. His cheek came to rest against my hair and I could feel the pain of my loneliness receding, could feel my insecurities melting away.

And an errant thought began to poke at the corner of my brain.

I was only eighteen, after all. So stupid. So confused. So scared.

I stood there on the porch in the embrace of my best friend, felt his uncomplicated love wrap around me like a protective cocoon, and I thought – just for minute, I thought, wouldn't this be so easy. Wouldn't it be so safe and nice. To have a love that was based on familiarity and friendship and healthy teenage hormones. To not have to battle, every second of every day, to not be overwhelmed by feeling. To rest.

And I wanted to push Edward, didn't I? I wanted to test him, test his resolve to be with me, because if I did... If I tested him and he failed, at least I'd finally know that I'd been right all along. And if he passed – if he could forgive me after something like this, then surely that'd be enough to put my every insecurity to rest, forever.

With that in mind, I tightened my grip on his neck, raised myself up onto my tiptoes, and stared into Jake's dark eyes. Willing him to take the hint.

He looked back at me for a split second before his eyes widened in shock. Internally I smiled, and lifted my chin to reach his lips.

And then Jacob – my best friend, the boy I could so easily let myself love, naive, sixteen-year-old Jacob cleaved my stupidity right down the middle.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asked, his eyes alight with astonishment, jerking his head away from me.

His tone was not angry, but the bluntness of his question was like a slap across the face. I blinked.

"What do you mean, what am I doing?" I asked. "I'm going to kiss my best friend, if that's okay."

His mouth was open, his eyes staring into mine. Then something seemed to snap into place, and he reached up and disentangled my arms from around his neck, stepping back hurriedly.

"No!" he said, raising his voice. "No, it sure as hell is not okay!"

I shrugged my shoulders, trying desperately to act casually. "Have it your way," I said flippantly, injecting every inch of glibness into my voice that I was capable of.

He didn't buy it. His eyes watched my face warily.

Suddenly he spoke – barked his words roughly. "What are you even doing here all alone, Bella? Where's Edward? I thought he'd be surgically attached to your hip now this has happened."

I frowned. It was unlike him to comment on the absence of Edward with anything less than glee. It was unlike him to refer to him by name instead of calling him leech or bloodsucker or some other sneeringly belittling derogative.

"He's giving me some space," I muttered, closing my mind from that dangerous avenue before it could wander too far down it.

Jacob's mouth dropped open. He gaped at me.

"Are you freaking kidding me?" he said, finally, running a hand through his hair. "After – after everything you two have been through – god, after you nearly *killed* yourself to save him, *twice* – you've suddenly decided that you need some space?!"

I folded my arms across my chest. "I don't want to talk about that, Jacob," I said tightly.

"Too fucking bad." He said it fiercely and despite myself and my modern-girl sensibilities, I was shocked. I had never heard anything even remotely close to that level of profanity cross his lips before.

I licked my lips, my mouth dry. "I thought you'd be happy," I whispered finally, dejectedly. It seemed I could get nothing right with the men in my life. "I thought you, of all people, would be happy."

His eyes had gone very flat. "What do you mean, happy? Why would I be happy about this?"

I pushed every ounce of shame I had to the back of my head, steadying my voice, unwrapping my arms from around my body and staring him baldly in the eye.

"Don't you want me?" I asked quietly.

If I thought he'd been speechless before, now he was positively pole axed. I watched his Adam's apple bobbing up and down several times before he spoke.

"What does that have to do with anything?" he asked, his voice hard.

"Don't you, Jacob?" I pressed, determined to find an answer, to cut to the heart of it. I was so tired of fighting against everything and everyone. Maybe this was the way to go.

A tiny, demonic light appeared in his eyes. "I have wanted you from the first second I saw you, Bella," he said fiercely. "Wanted you and crushed on you and dreamed about you and loved you. But I don't understand – I have no idea why you're even bringing that up now. I thought you didn't think of me like that."

It was my turn to swallow. "Maybe I do," I said, but even I could hear the dispassionate tone in my voice. "Maybe... I could. I mean, it'd be... It'd be easy, right? You know I love you already. Would everything else – it wouldn't be hard to fall in love with you, Jake. I could – I mean..."

He shook his head – his hands actually rose to cover his ears. "You're not saying this, Bella. You're not."

I stepped closer to him. "Yeah. Yeah I am."

He gripped patches of the hair at his temples, half demented.

"Are you crazy?" he said, almost yelled in fact. "Have you completely lost your mind? Lost all your compassion, your goddamn common sense? Or do you just enjoy playing sadistic games with the people who love you?"

A frown puckered my forehead. "You know that's not it," I said accusingly.

"No I freakin' well don't," he growled. "You don't mean a goddamned thing you're saying. Do you really think I want to hear that you *could* love me if you really had to? All you want is someone to soothe your ego. I'm your friend, Bella, not some... some toy to use whenever you need some comfort and throw back in the corner when you think you can stand on your own again!"

I could feel my bottom lip trembling. "I thought... I don't know... I thought we could just..."

He held up a hand, stopping my wavering speech in its tracks. "Unlike both you and your beloved vampire, I'm neither a martyr nor a masochist. I'm not even that much of a gentleman, and so I'm going to tell you a few things." He bit the words out, glaring at me as if willing me to disagree.

"First, you're acting like a psychopathic bitch."

My mouth fell open in shock. He ignored my mute protest.

"Second, you're either a complete idiot or incredibly naive if you think I'm going to fall for this stupid, misguided attempt to make yourself feel better. Third, you are *definitely* a complete idiot if you're seriously planning on giving up now, after you've come this far, after everything you've gone through.

"And fourth," he continued, his black eyes boring into mine, "I may be in love with you, I may want nothing more than for us to be together, but contrary to what you seem to think of me, I'm a pretty smart guy. It seems pretty obvious after all I've seen and heard from you and your leech these past few days that I was pretty much suckered from the very beginning. I never had a chance, and for you to stand here and pretend otherwise is the biggest fucking farce I've ever seen. Are you seriously that weak willed? Are you seriously going to just throw in the towel now?"

My blood was boiling. I could feel the steam build inside me.

"Don't you say another word," I hissed, through my teeth. "You haven't a clue of what I'm capable of, what I've gone through."

"Don't I?" he fired back. "I know better than anyone what you've gone through. Which is why this, right here, is so utterly unbelievable. I never once thought you were a martyr – not till right now."

I laughed bitterly.

"So in the course of one conversation, I've become an idiot, a martyr, and a bitch all rolled into one. Quite the transformation from innocent victimised Bella, isn't it?"

"I didn't say you *were* a bitch, I said you were *acting* like one," he snapped. "And nobody victimised you. You victimised yourself. You've been wallowing in misery for months, and now you *finally* have him back and you're turning away. He's bending to your every whim, begging for you to take him back and instead of being a goddamn grown up and getting the fuck over yourself, you're trying to kiss me to what – to get back at him? Nice, Bella. Classy."

"I don't have to listen to this," I snapped, and stepped back to swing the door in his face.

He caught it before it connected with the jamb and leaned in, his bulk towering over me.

"You're vulnerable and you're scared and you're running away from everything you know is right for you," he thundered. "Even *I* know it's right for you and I don't even *like* the bloodsucking freak. If you are seriously willing to let that slip through your fingers, Bella, then you never deserved it in the first place. If you're not going to fight for it now... well, he was right to leave you."

A blind and raging fury overtook my entire body. I stepped out fully onto the porch again and before Rational Bella could make herself known, I balled my hand into an angry little fist and angled it towards his remote and sneering face, throwing all of my body behind it.

He caught the blow easily, in a cupped palm, so that my flesh never even connected with his. His face was mocking now. His contempt only served to incense me further.

I struggled against him, and his arms reached out to wrap around my waist – carefully avoiding the small of my back but restraining me nonetheless.

I caught hold of his arms, dug my nails brutally hard into his muscles, and he flinched for a fraction of a second. It was all I needed. I used the extra leverage to thrust my body upwards, ignoring the fire racing across my back, and slammed my lips against his.

All I intended was to prove to us both that he could not control or outdo me – that his superior strength did not equal a corresponding weakness on my part. The kiss meant nothing. It was a demonstration of my pig-headedness, nothing more, nothing less. When I pulled away, as I planned to do shortly, I could crow triumphantly about how I'd overwhelmed a pissed-off werewolf, forced him to kiss me to serve my own twisted ends.

I geared up to pull my lips from his. But I was too late.

In a nanosecond, Jacob was gone.

Everything slowed down. I watched him go sailing through the air to collide sharply with an oak tree at the end of Charlie's land, splitting the trunk in half.

And I knew, with a dizzying sense of horror, what I would find when I turned my head.

A pair of furious black eyes connected to a very dangerous and very angry vampire.

--


	11. Rest

All remembered beauty is no more

Than a vague prelude to the thought of you --

You are the rarest soul I ever knew,

Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;

My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,

And when I think of you, I am at rest.

"To E.", Sara Teasdale

--

His eyes were on me for about three seconds before they flashed inexorably back to Jacob, now wincing in pain as he attempted to get to his feet.

Edward snarled. There was no other word for the low and menacing sound that ripped its way out of his chest. The timbre of his voice made my bones turn to jelly, made adrenaline surge in my blood and my extremities tingle with instinct. I had never before appreciated that as a vampire, he was, first and foremost, a predator. I couldn't believe how naive I'd been. Now I quailed in the face of his fury.

He stalked forwards, his muscles rippling as sinuously as a cat's, his lips drawn back over his teeth.

I was terrified. I knew that his baser instincts had taken over, that he had momentarily given control to the beast inside. If it had been Edward, and Edward alone, acting, Jacob would already be in shreds. It was the monster controlling him now, seeking to toy with his prey, to lengthen the slaughter, to enjoy it.

I found my voice.

"Edward," I shrieked, propelling my body forwards. He never paused or even threw me a glance – he continued in his stalking of Jacob, who suddenly looked very small and young.

I pushed myself even faster and somehow, my fingers fastened on the back of his shirt. I tugged at it desperately, my knuckles bone-white against the dark fabric.

"Edward, he hasn't done anything wrong," I cried desperately. I could not see my best friend massacred in front of me because of my own intense stupidity. I could not allow the man I loved to bear yet another crime on his shoulders.

A tremor ran through his body, yet he did not turn. "Bella, he was kissing you, *mauling* you," he spat over his shoulder. "Days after his filthy family put you in hospital, he's standing on your porch and pawing at you? Do you seriously expect me to just sit back and do nothing?"

Fear settled like a block of ice in my stomach. Obviously he'd acceded to my wishes and stayed away – stayed away, that is, until Alice saw my decision to contact him. I must have blurred right out of her sight afterwards. Obviously he had arrived too late to have overheard my conversation with Jacob.

And now I had to tell him... To tell him that...

My prior, selfish impetus to test him melted away with the horror that lanced through my body. Forget Italy, forget La Push, forget everything that had ever happened in my life, ever. This was the single hardest thing I would ever have to do.

"Edward," I whispered, my voice full of dread. Could he sense the tears in my voice? Could he sense the twin torments of fear and regret edging icy fingers down my spine? "Edward... I was the one who... Edward, I kissed him."

As if on cue, the weather broke. Thunder groaned across the heavens and the wind picked up, blowing my hair over my eyes. Rain started to fall, faster and faster until it was drumming angrily on the roof of the house.

And Edward had frozen. He was not even breathing.

I waited. My body was stiff with terror. I felt as though I had floated somehow above myself and was watching this entire sick scene through innocent eyes. I was not that girl, who had manipulated her best friend and hurt the man she loved, again and again. I couldn't have been so stupid. I was Bella Swan. I was mature, responsible, sensible. I always did the right thing.

I wished so much it was true. But as Edward turned, very slowly, on his heel to face me, I looked into his eyes and knew that I was the sole cause of the agony I saw there.

"You've made your choice, then?" he asked. His voice was very quiet and calm.

For a moment I didn't understand what he meant. Then the events of the last few days swirled round in my head and I knew a moment of horrified realisation as his words echoed through me.

I'm giving you a choice... I love you so much I would die for you... I am yours... Whatever you decide, I will always love you...

I wanted to deny it, to cry, to fly to him. But my limbs had frozen, my mouth open in a silent scream.

Somehow I couldn't move. My arms locked tightly around my torso and I struggled to remain upright. The entire world was fuzzy and disorientating. By now, red-hot claws of pain were ripping their way slowly through my body. My head spun around and around – all I could do was hang onto myself, attempt to ground myself, and gasp for breath.

"I... I... I don't... know," I wheezed, swaying where I stood. "I can't,... I just... I need..."

Edward swallowed once, hard, and then his arms were around me, gently picking me up and carrying me into the house. I peered over his shoulder and through the mist of rain and morphine I saw Jacob shaking his head, as if in slow motion, and walking away.

Nausea rippled through me. I felt as weak as a kitten – as exposed and defenceless as a newborn. And Edward was there. He was all I could hang onto as my head spun.

He laid me gently on my bed. In the space of time it took me to blink, a glass of water was balanced on my bedside table and a blanket was being laid over my legs.

His hand stroked my hair. "It's okay, Bella," he murmured softly. "I told you. You don't have to decide right away. I will never be more than a phone call away, and when you want to talk – whatever you decide, you..."

He paused to swallow, and if not for that pained motion, I would never have guessed at how hard this must be for him.

"You know where to find me," he finished. He hesitated, then leaned down to brush his lips softly against my cheek. The smell of honeysuckle and buttered sunshine washed over me, filling my lungs.

I breathed in deeply, barely feeling the cool rush of air accompanying his leaving as I fell deeply into a numb slumber.

--

A circle of trees surrounded me, hemming me in. I was lost in the forest and there were voices all around, hissing accusatory words. Everywhere I looked I saw a thousand faces, blank white eyes turned blindly towards me, and yet not a single one was what I was looking for.

Then I saw him, through the trees. His strong shoulders, his straight nose, his soft hair, a brief flash of his golden eyes. He stared at me coldly, then turned and walked away.

My feet were rooted to the ground, immobile. My mouth was open and I was straining to scream, but nothing emerged. The images began to swirl, the faces were moving, mouthing words...

The sound of my own scream woke me up.

My breathing tore frantically out of my lungs, too loud in the cold room. My hands, scrabbling at blankets, reached out and found nothing.

I threw myself upright, then instantly regretted it as the motion caused my back to snarl up in knots of pain. Gritting my teeth, I ignored the agony and fastened my eyes to the rocking chair by the window.

Nothing.

He was not there. All that remained to indicated he'd ever been there was my window, still left slightly ajar, and a certain hint of perfume in the air.

My heart twisted. Automatically I shifted onto my side, my knees curling inwards, my cheek coming to rest against the rounded bone of my patella.

How was it that even when the world around me was hazy and blurry, even as my life disintegrated into meaningless shapes, still just the scent of his skin, faint in the air, shot me through with warmth?

That was the whole problem. I felt so much for him, too much maybe. Every second with him felt like I was being pulled towards something so vast and infinite that it could swallow me whole. And when I reached out to find him gone, the fear of losing him no longer an idea but a fact – then I fell, endlessly, into that terrible void.

Being around him was a delicate balancing act. It was so easy to immerse myself in the task of loving him, of moulding my own personality over his love for me. I had lost myself like that before and it had led to disaster. I was scared – so scared – of it happening again.

I did not trust him, and I did not trust myself. What we felt for each other was too strange, too powerful. And it had led to so much pain that the joy it had also brought had retreated into the fog of my memory.

We had made the same mistakes, over and over, and it seemed as though we had never learned anything at all about each other. I was exhausted from untangling the knots of emotion in our relationship. Working things out between us would take so much effort, so much time and effort and patience, and I was so very tired.

Just for once, I wanted things to be easy, I wanted to not have to battle every step of the way to be with him.

I wanted to rest. But most of all, I just wanted to disappear. Everything was too much. The events of the past week were weighing heavily on my feeble, broken body, and I wasn't strong enough to bear the load anymore. I just wanted everything to fade.

I closed my eyes and swallowed, hard.

Giving up was foreign to me. I did not know how to do it

And so it came to pass that after a few more minutes of woebegone moping, I stumbled out of bed.

My feet hit the floor in exactly the wrong place – or exactly the right one, depending on how you look at it. A floorboard that I had never before suspected to faulty groaned and shifted, and I stumbled forwards, cursing as I stubbed a toe.

I looked around and down, reaching for the floorboard, about to shove it back into place. And I froze as a shy glint of silver winked at me.

I reached a trembling hand into the dark recess of the floor. But I knew, ever before my fingers touched the smooth hard plastic of a CD case, what I would find.

Maybe I had always known.

I drew them out slowly – the CD, the photographs, the airline tickets. Fanning them over and back in my hands.

It was as if something was happening deep in my body, something very slow but infinitely important. The foundations of my entire being were quivering in anticipation.

Like one in a dream, I was floating towards my dusty CD player. I was sure I still had feet, sure that my legs were still working, but in that moment I honestly couldn't have located them had anyone asked.

Barely a second later an unknown finger was pressing play.

When the first notes of the piano hit the air – that's when it happened. That's when every steeled lie I'd built up around myself in the past week crumbled helplessly to dust.

To the casual observer, nothing had altered. I was still standing there, my smelly bandages and damp jeans included, barefoot in the shag pile of my room's carpet. However, deep within me, something fused, knit back together and was baptised by the gentle falling of music.

I listened to this utterly pure representation of Edward's feelings. Of his love for me, crystallised into being with a few simple cadences and crotchets. Of his hope for our future, his longing for a human life with me.

I'd inspired the piece, he'd explained that very first day. He loved me and he loved music and so he'd tried to merge his two passions together.

It hadn't worked, though. This song, that had been meant to pay homage to me, only served to reflect the purity of his heart and soul. The depths to which he could love.

I did not deserve such devotion. Nobody did, but especially not me. I had treated his heart like so much garbage, flung his feelings to a dusty corner of my mind out of pure fear.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to break down. I wanted to shove everything I'd felt in the past few minutes into a corner of my mind, lock it down tight so it couldn't hurt anymore.

The song ended, drifting away on a final, melancholic note. And finally, I couldn't do it. Couldn't fight this anymore.

I took a deep breath then, and squared my shoulders.

It was time.

--

EPOV

I heard the soft footfall of her steps and the thudding beat of her heart before she was anywhere near the house. I felt so attuned to her. I was sure that by concentrating hard enough I would have been able to pinpoint exactly where she was, no matter what distance lay between us.

I had been reading in my room – or trying to, anyway. I put the book down, torn between many different paths. Part of me wanted to run to her side, sweep her out of the rain and bear her away to somewhere she could be safe and warm. Another part of me – the part most concerned with self-preservation – wanted to wait for as long as possible. To delay the inevitable, protect myself for as long as I possibly could.

The last time Alice had gotten any glimpse of Bella's future had been when she'd seen her picking up the phone to ring me. Straight afterwards she had blurred straight out of her sight. And I had neither seen nor heard from my pixie sister since.

Maybe it was meant to be this way. Better for me, to not experience the heartache to come before the event itself. Maybe it was better not to have to witness, first hand, the blank hole in Alice's mind that Bella should have occupied. To know it was caused by her bond to the wolf.

When I had arrived at her house to find them in an embrace, I had reacted purely out of instinct. I had witnessed, first hand, the turbulence in the mongrel's thoughts, had seen his desire warring with... with something that had been so murky and confused in his mind, so conflicted with feelings of self-disgust and twisted longing that even I hadn't been able to make sense of it.

Not that it had mattered, in the end. All that I'd been able to concentrate was the mutt's inner turmoil, his shaky grasp on his self-control, and I'd responded to protect what I felt to be mine.

I shook my head in disgust. Even after all this time I was still thinking of her as a possession, rather than the strong and independent woman she was. No matter how much the idea caused me to wince every time, I had to let go – to quell my more protective instincts and let Bella live her life.

Her happiness was all that mattered. Always. I had told her that I'd do anything for her, and I had been utterly sincere. There was nothing I wouldn't do to make her happy. Even if that meant stepping out of her life completely.

With a sigh, I headed downstairs to face my fate.

--

She was utterly drenched. I could see every tiny droplet of water clinging to her eyelashes. Rivulets ran down her forehead, tumbled from the edge of her graceful nose, hugged the bow of her lips, defying gravity.

She had never looked more beautiful. Inwardly, I groaned in disbelief. Was the universe that unkind – that it would present to me this vision and demand, simultaneously, that I let it go?

Her eyes beseeched mine for... For what? Strength? Forgiveness? Redemption? Whatever she wanted from me, she could have. I wished she could know that, opened my mouth to tell her, in fact, but she beat me to it.

"Edward," she sighed. Despite everything, she still uttered my antiquated name as though it were something holy. It escaped from her mouth like a prayer.

I bit my lip – unconsciously emulating the girl in front of me – and nodded for her to continue. Feeling the fissures in my heart tremble. But let them crack open – let them pull me apart and still I would bear it. I could bear anything for her.

"Edward," she repeated tremulously. "I've made my decision."

--


	12. Alive

--

I who have died am alive again today,

And this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth

Day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay

Great happening illimitably earth

~ "I Thank You God for Most This Amazing", e.e. cummings

--

The sight of him, standing so still in front of me in the rain, knocked the breath from my lungs. I could not stop looking at him. I felt as though I were really seeing him – for the first time in days, maybe for the first time ever.

I struggled to breathe. All that I had put him through was plainly visible, easily seen in his body. The lines of his shoulders, normally so straight, had cracked – they slumped down, rounding to his chest as if trying to shield his heart from some fatal blow. His head was bowed, his cheeks hollow, his eyes torn with fear and pain and self-hatred.

I wanted to scream. I had done this to him. I had reduced him to this broken being before me.

If I had ever once thought, in the past year, that I had been in pain – it was nothing compared to now.

In that moment, Jacob's words and Edward's music and my befuddled psyche all somehow meshed together and formed a very clear picture. Maybe my brain was finally so overwhelmed that for once, it couldn't lie to itself.

Whatever the reason, emotion after emotion washed through me. I stood stoically against the tumult but there was no withstanding the sheer force of feeling bearing down on my head. There was no denying it.

I gasped harshly, my arms locking round my torso. And just like that, everything clicked into place.

Somewhere deep in the depths of my consciousness, I was still - _still_ - blisteringly angry with him. My shrieking insecurities, my blind terror, my prideful stubbornness and rage were all still growling in the dark. I knew that, as surely as I knew my own name. But I couldn't hold onto it anymore.

I could not re-inflate the anger and self-loathing that had driven me to say such cruel things, act in such despicable ways. I couldn't even find it. I knew it was there, but somehow it was silent in the face of this feeling that was so much more important.

I looked at his face, and for once I was not stunned by the beauty of it, tortured and rain-sodden as it was – I was too distracted by everything else that he was showing me in that moment. Just like the first day after Italy, his every feeling beamed out of him. I could see it all.

Deep within me, his emotions resonated and my body trembled with the force of them.

I couldn't bear to put us through this any longer. If I dragged this out any longer it could and would break us both apart. Nothing could be worth that.

Maybe if we were, or ever had been, two normal people in love, releasing the kind of volatile moods I'd been giving voice to could have been therapeutic. Maybe if that had been the case I could have held onto my stubborn pride and my stupid sense of self-righteousness – could have rejoiced in inflicting as many scars on his heart as he'd inflicted on mine.

But it wasn't the case. And it never had been.

It wasn't that I couldn't bear the thought of his suffering because of how much I loved him – though to a large extent, that was certainly true. The thing that finally gave me strength enough to admit my weakness was much, much simpler than that.

Edward's life was so intertwined with mine that there could be no separating it. I had given my heart to him utterly, and received his in return. There was no breaking the kind of bonds we'd forged. Not by separation or stubbornness or time or life.

Nothing could do it, because everything he felt, I felt. His pain found purchase within me. I had spoken the cruellest words I'd ever uttered in my life to the one person I loved above all others, had pulled him towards me and pushed him away, had driven him to enough madness that he'd endangered both of our lives – all the while ignoring the fact that in causing him pain, I was doubly increasing my own.

In a very real way, he was more me than I was. Whatever he felt echoed within me.

My breathing was coming fast and quick now. Edward's eyes were twisting into mine, searching, I was sure, for the answer that I still hadn't given him.

"Edward..." His name sighed out of my mouth. I wondered if he could sense the happiness slowly making its way through my body as I succumbed finally, blissfully, to our fate.

"Edward," I repeated tremulously, "I've made my decision."

My eyes met his, and his whole face dropped, his head hanging low. Waiting for a blow that would never come.

A sick pain roiled in my stomach. He – he thought I was going to reject him...

That realisation gave me strength, igniting a fire in my belly that raced down to my lower limbs, fuelling me forward.

I flew into his arms, pulling the hair at the nape of his neck into my fists, dragging him as close as I could possibly get him. My body was no longer my own. My chest heaved against his, my breaths ripping from my lungs, my lips feathering over his face, kissing his skin again and again.

"Edward, Edward, Edward," I gasped through my tears. I chanted it like a prayer, sobbing, sobbing.

His arms came around my waist and he held me to him carefully. His eyes closed. I kissed his eyelids, then buried my head deep into the crook of his neck.

"Bella..." His voice groaned. "Bella, don't cry, love. Don't cry. It's all right. I... I understand."

I drew back and grabbed his face between my two hands, my small thumbs stroking across his cheekbones, my forehead touching his.

"Edward," I cried, my body trembling. "Edward – there was never a choice. I've never had a choice. It's always been you. Only you. Always."

His breath caught, and a bloom of hope burst forth in his eyes.

"Bella," his voice croaked. "Bella, is it... are you saying... are you _sure_ that..."

I laughed through my tears, looking at him. "Yes, Edward. I'm sure. You're mine, and I'm yours."

And with that, I kissed him.

It was the barest brush of my lips against his, and yet every particle of me hummed and fizzed at the contact. I closed my eyes, transported. This... it had been so long since this. Edward's slightest touch had always undone me entirely – this was no different. That gentle contact threw me headfirst into a world of pure sensation. Nothing existed but him.

Deep in the back of my mind I was aware of my fear to be this dependent on anybody or anything and yet even armed with that knowledge, my body arched into his. Briefly I broke away, looked into his eyes, and I could see the same fear there; that we'd wake up from this dream and find ourselves alone. The knowledge of his weakness gave me courage to continue. I kissed him again.

He groaned, a low sound, and his hands were suddenly in my hair, pulling me closer. His mouth opened under mine, and his tongue flickered shyly over my bottom lip. I gasped into his mouth, my head reeling.

This... he loved me. He was just in love with me as I was with him. And he wanted me in the same ways.

My lips were suddenly exultant upon his. My hands clutched around his neck, burying in his hair, straining for even more contact. And the world just fell away.

He did not once move his lips from my flesh. Even when I had to pull my lips from his, gasping for air, his mouth merely moved to ghost along the line of my jaw, kissing my chin before claiming my mouth again, desperately, hungrily. Each time it was a confirmation of his feelings, each time it made me want to sing with the realisation that we were on exactly the same page.

I did not want to stop touching him for a minute. I wanted him to surround me, overwhelm me, I wanted to sink deep into him and never resurface. If I could have unzipped his skin, crawled inside him and zipped him up again, still we would not have been close enough.

The most delicious sounds, mewls and groans and sighs, were issuing from the back of his throat. His hands were meandering up and down the length of my back, ghosting over my injuries, always careful not to press too hard. If I could have been bothered to speak, I would have told him not to bother being gentle. I had never been hurt. Nothing existed in the world but this moment.

After what seemed like several long lifetimes, we slowed. His lips were gentle now, feathering dreamily across mine. Our eyes were open, drinking each other in. Every line of my body was aligned with his. His arms held me tightly, the way I'd always wanted him to hold me – I could not have broken away if I'd tried.

He sighed deeply and rested his forehead against mine. Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes. My body shook with the realisation that my earlier epiphany of our shared pain applied to this as well.

I could feel exactly how much he loved me. It flowed right through me, electrifying my nerves. Every inner demon was banished while his skin touched mine, every fear laid to rest. It was the purest thing I had ever felt in my life, this communion of skin against skin – holier than anything I had ever felt in a church. I had been a fool to deny us this for so long.

Dimly I realised that we had sunken to our knees in the wet grass, wrapped around each other. A chilly dampness was creeping its way up my jeans, and I just didn't care.

Edward's face was buried in the crook of my neck. I stroked his head, pulling his hair between two fingers, luxuriating in the silky softness. Every now and then I could feel his lips move against the skin of my throat. I wasn't sure, but it sounded to me like he was mouthing "Thank God", over and over.

I wanted nothing else, no nourishment, no shelter. I had everything. My arms wrapped around his shoulders with a strength that would have done any vampire proud.

He drew back, ever so slightly, and cupped my face in his hands. He kissed my forehead, my eyelids, the tip of my nose – tiny butterfly kisses. There was not one particle of skin on my face that he neglected, and each time his lips broke from my skin, he murmured "I love you," before continuing where he'd left off.

His entire being had lifted and lightened. His eyes were full of radiant golden fire, looking and looking at me, his hands softly stroking my hair.

I felt so loved. So wanted. So needed.

"Edward," I sobbed, "Oh god, Edward, I missed you so much."

He said nothing, just continued to shower my face with tiny kisses, his eyes marvelling. I clung to him, my body desperate for this, starving for it, and he clung right back. There was no hesitance in his hands as they wrapped around my waist, no fear in his kiss or bloodlust in his eyes. Love poured out of him, saturating us both, filling us up with bubbles of joy.

I shivered, once, and instantly I was in his arms, being carried gently towards the Cullen house.

"Let's get you warm and dry," he whispered.

--

The house was deserted. I had just enough time to be grateful for this fact, and then his lips were in my hair, and everything else became unimportant.

He brought me upstairs, averting his eyes as I shed my shirt and squirmed impatiently inside the soggy bandages. He wrapped me in a fluffy towel, using his hands to manipulate it gently until the tender friction dried me completely. He did the same to my hair – I barely felt a tug, and yet within minutes every strand on my head had been towel-dried into submission.

I wriggled out of my soggy jeans, and somehow he had a pair of sweats ready and waiting for me to step into. He carried me to his room and laid me gently on the couch.

"I'll be right back," he promised. And he was – appearing moments later re-dressed and fully dry.

He sat beside me on the couch and opened his arms. I crawled into them. His hand held my head against the crook of his shoulder, his fingers lightly stroking through my hair. I drew meaningless patterns on the pocket of his light shirt. The maddening need to be as close to him as possible had quietened some, but still it itched at the back of my mind. With that thought, I pressed myself closer to him and smiled as his arms tightened around me.

"Oh, Bella," he crooned against the top of my head.

I laced my fingers together across his chest and propped my chin on them, looking down at him and smiling softly.

"What is it?" I asked quietly.

His beautiful eyes were caressing the contours of my face so tenderly that it felt as though he were actually touching me.

"I just never thought I'd have this again," he whispered. I could hear the swell of emotion in his words. Instantly my throat tightened.

"I know," I murmured back. "This – we've messed up so absolutely that I never thought I'd be able to look at you again, never mind... this." I gestured to our entwined bodies.

Something tightened in his eyes. "It was all my fault," he said regretfully. "If I'd never left you..."

I interrupted. "If you'd never left me, the problems that tore us apart would just have come up some other time. At least now we know."

His thumbs were sweeping slowly across the small of my back. I tried to ignore the icy flames shooting through my skin at the contact.

"What do we know?" he asked softly, his eyes intent and interested.

I smiled, and leaned down to kiss the tip of his nose.

"We know that we're both idiots," I whispered. A deep-throated chuckle bubbled out of his throat. I smiled.

"That we are, my Bella. That we are." His thumbs were softly tracing meaningless circles on the skin of my back.

I tried to concentrate. "We've made so many mistakes, Edward... We've really done our best to tear each other apart, and I don't... I can't..."

His hands stopped their ministrations. His eyes were suddenly wary. "Can't what?" he asked worriedly.

I took a deep breath. "I can't guarantee it won't happen again. I'm eighteen, Edward, and I'm – I'm so in love with you that it hurts. And it's scary as hell. It terrifies me. I can't tell you that I'll never do anything stupid ever again – though I can promise to try my best."

His voice and eyes were both sad. "Is this about Jacob?"

"No!" The word gasped out of me, horrified. I shook my head vehemently.

He attempted to speak again. My fingers found his lips, pressed them closed.

"I... I honestly don't know what I was thinking, Edward, but I never once wanted to make you doubt... I mean, I never..."

His eyes echoed the frustration that I felt so keenly.

I pushed off his chest, sitting up and running my hands through my hair. "Why is this so hard to say?!" I muttered.

He had risen with me, his eyes looking into mine.

"I understand, Bella," he said gently, understandingly. I wanted to scream. How could he understand when I myself didn't?

His lips touched my cheek briefly. Almost platonically.

"Jacob was there for you when I wasn't. He stitched you back up. It's natural for you to wonder – to have feelings –"

I was shaking my head back and forth fervently. At this, my words burst forth.

"Jacob didn't fix me," I said definitively. "Didn't even come close. He tried – and god, I'll never understand what I did to deserve it – but he didn't. He couldn't, Edward. He loved me, but he couldn't help me. I'm not healed. Not even close."

He was confused now. He exhaled in a gush, ran his fingers through his hair.

"Then how...?" he began. Once more, I cut him off.

"Because it got to a point where the pain of being with you was being outweighed by the pain of being without you," I whispered softly. My fingers found his, and I squeezed. "I'm giving you another chance."

I frowned. Something was not quite right with that statement... My forehead cleared as I realised what it was. "We're giving *each other* a second chance. We've hurt each other. We are both responsible for what's happened. And Edward... I'm tired of being a one-woman emotional freak show."

Another chuckle rumbled out of his chest. "And I'm tired of being the world's most morose and cynical vampire."

I smiled brilliantly at him. "Now that is something I never thought I'd hear you say."

His hand found my cheek, his thumb sweeping back and forth over my cheekbone.

"We are so incredibly lucky," he whispered softly. "To love and be loved like this. How many people in the world ever get to feel like this about another human being? And we've been so stupid about it. So reckless and blind."

I nodded, touched my forehead to his.

"Do you think..." My voice cracked. I hesitated, tried again. "Do you think, for a little while at least, we can just... be in love? That we can just act like a normal couple for once?"

"You mean, be happy together?" he asked, sounding amused. "I honestly don't know. I don't think I've ever really tried."

I laughed. "Yes. Happy. In love. Content. You know. You can tell me fifty times a day that you'll never leave me again and I'll... I don't know what I'll do for you, but it'll be something brilliant, and we'll just..."

"...be." He finished, smiling. "I think I can handle that, Bella." My hands were in his, and he lifted one to kiss the inside of my wrist. "As for what you can do for me... Just be happy, Bella. Just love me and be happy."

The lump was back in my throat, tears once more blurring my vision. Was this at all normal – to feel this much for someone other than yourself? How had I managed this, how had I inspired it? It felt as though it was going to break my body apart with its force.

He felt it too, I could tell. His eyes were intent upon mine.

"About your request," he murmured, and ducked his head so his nose nuzzled the crook of my throat.

I swallowed. "Yes?"

He kissed my skin softly. I had to remind myself how to breathe. "Do you think I could get a head-start on things?"

"Hmm?" I was beyond normal speech. Beyond caring.

He drew back, and my breath caught at the tender expression in his eyes.

"By starting now, I mean," he said. And there it was – that crooked half-smile that I loved so much.

My heart began to thud inside my chest. "I think I could handle that," I said, my attempt to be casual falling flat as my voice cracked.

He kissed my cheek softly. Suddenly his eyes were very serious.

"I love you, Isabella Swan," he whispered against my skin. He kissed me again. "I will never leave you again."

His hands skirted timidly on the bare skin of my lower stomach. I fought for air.

He moved lower, kissing the hollow behind my ear.

"I love you. I will never leave you. Ever."

My hands came up to clutch at his shoulders, trying desperately to pull him closer.

His lips met mine, and everything that had been building in us exploded. We were burning, both of us, twisting our bodies together in an impossible attempt to get even closer. My hands were buried in his hair, almost clawing at him, and he was groaning into my mouth – a near-constant sound.

He broke away, gasping, looking down at me in awe. There was a light in his eyes that turned my bones to jelly.

And suddenly he was everywhere. Everything. All I could feel and think and breathe was Edward. Whisper-soft caresses covered my skin like a blanket, moving down my arms, across my throat, down to my collarbones, ghosting along the lines of my bandages.

If ever I had been irritated by simple strips of cloth before, it was nothing compared to now. I wanted nothing between us. He overwhelmed me yet still he was not close enough.

"I love you... love you... love you Bella," he murmured as he kissed his way up the soft skin of my inner thigh, pushing the irritating fabric of my sweatpants out of the way with his nose. I couldn't figure out whether this was the most intense pleasure, or the most agonising pain. Dimly I was aware that I was sobbing his name, crying my love for him into the empty air. Begging him to stop, or maybe to never stop. I pleaded with him to never let me go and he answered with a growl, his lips finally, mercifully, covering mine again, possessive and demanding and sweet and soft, all at once.

I kissed him back then, as fiercely as I was able. Everything I needed to know was there in the fire between us. We were as vulnerable as we had ever been, though we were both almost fully clothed. I could feel his joy and his sadness and his hope and his despair and his love and his desire pouring through him, through us both.

And I knew.

We were going to make it.

--


	13. Belonging

You rose into my life

Like a promised sunrise.

Brightening my days with the light in your eyes.

I've never been so strong,

Now I'm where I belong.

~ "Where We Belong: A Duet", Maya Angelou.

--

"Where do we go from here?"

Her voice came quietly. Her head was nestled in the crook of my neck, her fingers tracing slow and delicate circles on my chest through the fabric of my light shirt.

I stroked her hair. "Anywhere we like. Or nowhere, if you prefer."

She hummed and smiled – I could feel her lips curve against the skin of my collarbone.

"As tempting as that sounds, I think it would be kind of unhealthy. To not... go places."

I kissed the top of her head. "Why do I have the feeling that you're not talking about taking an impromptu road trip with me?"

She poked me. Just gently. "Be serious," she scolded. "My metaphors may suck but I do have a point."

Mimicking her motions from earlier, she laced her fingers together, right over my heart, and propped her chin on them. Her face was inches from mine, her sweet breath fanning across my skin, her eyes probing, searching for answers.

"What do we do now, Edward?" she asked. "Where do we go?"

Of its own volition entirely, my hands started tracing a path up and down her back, the bulk of bandages under her clothes apparent.

"Where do you want to go?" I asked softly. "I am happy to do whatever you want to, Bella. Keep me in your life and I will be the happiest man on the planet."

She arched her eyebrows at me. "Whatever I want?" she asked sarcastically.

"Yes," I promised, not quite understanding where she was going with her train of thought.

Something tightened in her eyes. When she spoke, her voice had a dangerous edge to it that I didn't fully understand.

"So if I asked you to change me now, you'd do it?" she asked scornfully. Her body on mine had tensed, her muscles spasming as she awaited my negative reply – awaited yet another rejection.

I paused, sweeping my fingers over the soft skin of her cheek. I knew it was cruel to keep her waiting, but I couldn't help it. The habits of a century were not going to change overnight. I could not answer her truly until I had examined the issue once more.

A revelation that had been curled in the back of my mind since Italy – since the first day I met her, really – stretched out and thrust itself roughly into my awareness, forcing me to take stock of it.

I couldn't live without her. There was no point in an existence without her by my side. No joy in life without her near.

And she'd proved that the same was true for her. The love we shared was a living, breathing thing. We had both confined it, twisted it into cages of lies and insecurity to prevent it from really touching us. But still it remained, pulsing quietly, itching uncomfortably in the dark. Now through our actions we had set it free, and it flowed through us both.

I could not doubt her love for me. Not when I could feel it seeping out of every pore in her body, wrapping me in a secure embrace.

Something tightened in my chest and then bubbled away with a sigh, as I ruefully acknowledged that which I had known, on some level, since the first moment I met her.

"Yes," I said simply, watching her face with caution. "Yes, Bella, I would change you right now, if it was what you truly wished. What you truly desired."

Disbelief and confusion swept across her face in waves.

"Right now?" she asked, scepticism colouring her voice.

I allowed a smile to touch the corner of my mouth. "Yes, love, right now. Whatever you want, I will give if it is within my power to do so."

She stared at me, her mouth agape.

"Are you serious?" she said finally. "What happened to the freaking out over my soul? The ridiculous self-sacrifice? The constant denial of what we both want?"

My hands gathered her hair into bunches, let it slip through my fingers and gathered it again.

"I'm over it," I said briefly, smiling blissfully at her.

"Over it. You. You're over it," she repeated flatly.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am." I spoke softly to her, needing her to understand. "I... Bella, you have to realise that I have battled this, this monster inside, for so long. I have fought to overcome it and I just about had it conquered when you tripped into my life. And you unleashed it, goaded it even. For so long it was impossible to separate what I felt for you from what it wanted me to do to you. Impossible to contemplate being with you without wanting to drink your blood."

Her eyes were spellbound. "And now?"

"Now..." My fingers trailed down her cheek, smiling at her blush, loving the skip in her heartbeat. "Now I have no such issues. I... I am utterly in love with you, Bella. Completely and absolutely. Like I never thought I could love anybody or anything. I've been alive for over a century and I thought I had experienced just about every emotion I was capable of... I was so, so wrong. You... you defy everything I've ever held to be true."

She frowned. "I don't understand how that makes you feel better about changing me, though."

"Don't you see, Bella?" I whispered throatily, my hands meandering up and down her back. "Nothing that is capable of loving and being loved like this could possibly be without a soul. You – you have shown me that from the second you told me you wanted me... You've given me myself back, Bella. And I finally believe – I'm trying really hard to believe that there is more to me than just a monster.

"So yes," I concluded, smiling gently at her. "Yes, I will change you right here and right now if you'd like me to. If it's what you want. I do not want to live one single day without you."

Tears, shiny as glass, appeared in her eyes. Softly and gently, she lowered her lips to mine. She kissed me sweetly for a few minutes, then drew back, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

"I didn't realise how much I needed to hear that till you said it," she whispered throatily. "Thank you, Edward. Thank you."

She laid her head back to rest on my shoulder. Several soft minutes of silence passed between us as we lay there quietly, simply revelling in the other's presence.

"Is that a yes?" I asked finally, tilting her chin with my thumb and forefinger so her eyes found mine. "Is that what you want?"

A new resolution formed in her face. "It's what I want," she said decisively, "but not yet. The time isn't right. There are still things I want to experience as a human – important things."

"Oh?" I quirked my brow at her. "I wasn't aware that you wanted anything save immortality."

"Let's just say that the last few days have given me a whole new perspective on things," she said grimly.

I sighed, stroking her soft arms. "You and me both. But I'm curious. What is it that you want to experience?"

She looked straight into my face. The fire in her eyes shocked me. She looked... fierce.

When she spoke, her voice was strong and confident. "I want to make love with you, Edward."

--

BPOV

"I want to make love with you, Edward."

I watched him carefully as his eyes skittered around my face in shock. His body was suddenly very still under mine. He wasn't even breathing.

His mouth opened and closed a few times. If the situation hadn't been so serious, I might have laughed. He looked utterly flummoxed.

When he finally spoke, his voice was flat. "You can't be serious."

I nodded grimly, holding his eyes. "I am."

Already he was shaking his head, moving away from me, raising his body off the couch. I clung to him stubbornly, refusing to shift, though I knew that if he really wanted to, he could make me move.

I was not going to beg, or plead. I was not going to be pathetic and I was not going to lose all dignity. What I wanted was natural.

"Edward," I said gently, "look at me."

He ran his hands through his hair, frustrated.

"I could literally break you in half, Bella, you realise that? If – that – I wish so much that that was an option for us, but it's not. Not until after you're changed."

I shook my head no, held my fingers over his lips when he opened his mouth to argue with me.

"Edward, think about it. Just think about the amount of control you exude *every single day*. To move at a human pace. To hold a pen without crushing it. To not react to the thoughts of everybody around you. To play piano without hammering straight through the keys. To deny the scent of blood – the scent of *my* blood – even when it's flowing freely in front of you. You have never slipped, not once. How can you possibly think that you'd hurt me if we made love?"

He made another concentrated effort to move, to speak, and I hung grimly on, refusing to let him separate us.

"I know that it would be difficult," I promised, staring into his dark eyes, willing him to understand. "I know that you would be distracted... but you've been distracted before and you've never slipped. You were so insane with the scent of my blood that day in Ms. Cope's office that I'm sure you could have reached for the handle of the door, intending to open it, and ripped it off its hinges without even thinking about it. You weren't even thinking about being in control then and yet you were."

Again he shook his head, squirmed under me, trying to get away, and again I clung to him for dear life.

"Bella," he said gently, "you're not thinking straight, love... This is all hormones talking, you don't understand –"

I grabbed him around the neck, forced him to look at me.

"Don't you dare use that excuse," I spat. "You know that it makes me feel about two inches tall when you sigh about my hormones? Edward, I am ridiculously in love with you. It's not wrong to feel this way – it's natural. It's not driven by hormones, it's driven by love. And I know you feel it too. I know you do."

His eyes had gone very dark. His face almost looked pained. "Of course I do, Bella," he whispered. "Why do you think I act so deplorably about it? I want it so much that it hurts. If I didn't... act superior, if I admitted how badly I want to keep going every time I make us stop..."

"What, I'd jump you? You bet your ass I would." I stared him down, noticing the tiny quirk that appeared in the corners of his mouth. "Edward, this lack of trust, this self-loathing you have... it hurts me as much as it hurts you. Can't you feel it? You are making mountains out of molehills here. I trust you. I love you."

His hands came up to stroke my face gently, his eyes following the path of his fingers very exactly.

"You're so fragile," he whispered, "so breakable... if I were to..."

"You won't," I assured him fiercely, holding my breath. He sounded so indecisive, so unsure... why was this so hard for him when it all seemed so clear to me...?

Try as I might to suppress it, an errant, worrying thought poked at the fabric of my confidence. Suddenly Edward was not the only one having difficulties making eye-contact.

I dropped my eyes to our hands, clasped together in his lap. "You do... you do want me, don't you?" I stuttered, terrified.

Instantly his hand was under my chin, raising my face to his, and his lips were on mine, fiercely. He moulded me to him as he kissed me, our bodies flush against each other. In that moment, something that had never been clear to me before was made painfully obvious. A flash of heat went through and through me as I felt his arousal press timidly against me.

I broke away, gasping for air, staring at him. He stroked my face gently.

"Yes, Bella," he declared in a strong voice, grinning abashedly at me. "Yes, I want you." His hands cupped my cheeks. "God, how I want you..."

Every reaction I had ever had to the man in front of me was building deep within me. I felt as though I was going to explode with all he made me feel.

"Then take me," I whispered, and watched him swallow as he nodded.

Suddenly I was the shy one, blushing under his gaze. And Edward was confident without being controlling, gentle and tender without being unbearably frustrating.

He kissed me for what seemed like hours, every cell in my body melting in icy fire at the contact. He undressed me unbearably slowly, kissing every inch of skin as he uncovered it, unwrapping me from my bandages like a present, staring at my feeble human body as though it was the most perfect thing he'd ever seen. Until finally there were no barriers between us.

Every nerve in my body was exploding at once, almost unbearably sensitive. Even the backs of my arms tingled when I wrapped them around his neck. And I knew Edward felt the same way – I could see it in the reactions of his body. When I traced patterns on his angel skin with my clumsy hands, he shivered. When my fingers brushed timidly against the beautiful dusting of hair leading from his navel downwards, he closed his eyes as if in prayer. And when, finally, he was deep within me and we were as close as we could possibly get, my name was a hoarse cry on his lips.

I wept as I begged him to hold me tighter, to keep me close to him forever, and he groaned in agreement. I never wanted to let him go, never wanted this to end.

Invariably, it did. He brought me to a place I'd never known existed, pushing me over the edge again and again, watching it all with the most beautiful expression of love. And when finally he reached his own release, the look on his face was indescribable – his eyes holding mine, his lips mouthing my name over and over.

In the end we collapsed. His arms were like steel girders around my waist, holding my head firmly to his chest. I laid gentle kisses on his shoulders, whispering thank you, and that I loved him. Then I drifted to sleep, safe and secure in his embrace, glowing in the light of his love.

--


	14. Star

Light, so low in the vale

You flash and lighten afar;

For this is the golden morning of love

And you are his morning star.

"Marriage Morning", Alfred Lord Tennyson

--

I woke to the feeling of gentle hands stroking my hair, running the length of my bare back, carefully avoiding the lines of my injuries, massaging tender circles on my skin. I smiled sleepily, a fog of euphoria enveloping me. I opened my eyes and beamed.

"Good morning, beautiful," Edward whispered, kissing me gently, his breathtaking smile curving against my lips. I stretched out, feeling the length of his naked body against mine, and hugged him tightly, planting a small kiss on his shoulder.

"Good morning," I cooed into his skin, and felt, rather than saw, his smile.

"How do you feel?" he asked softly, his breath fluttering across my skin.

I stretched and wiggled before him, performing a complete internal assessment.

"Perfect," I said shyly, looking up at him through my eyelashes.

He shook his head in amazement, the most beautiful smile gracing his lips.

"There isn't a mark on you that shouldn't be," he said, his voice marvelling. "I never once held you too tightly or... or bit you. Bella, I didn't even tear your stitches...."

My smile was victorious. "Told you so," I teased. "And what, were you really expecting my stitches to tear? I can't even imagine how that would happen."

"Oh, it's easier than you'd expect, my darling," he answered playfully. "I'll show you sometime. It helps that you're so..."

I arched my eyebrows at him. His own eyes widened, and I was sure that had he been human, his cheeks would have been on fire.

"So...?" I prompted him.

"So... bendy," he murmured, grinning crookedly at me.

A flash of heat went through me. I loved that I could reduce this articulate man, this perfect, eloquent creature, into using an adjective like bendy to describe the motions of my body.

I grinned at him, bending my head to kiss him tenderly.

"You have no idea," I whispered against his mouth, and rejoiced in his sigh.

His hands gripped my arms gently, encouraging me to relax completely against him.

For the longest time we lay there in absolute silence. Rare tendrils of golden sunlight snaked their way across the room, marking the passing of another day, the descent into twilight. Our bodies were pressed flush against each other, fitting together perfectly.

A very unfamiliar emotion swept through me. I was... proud of myself.

I was proud that I had been brave enough to talk about this with Edward. Proud that I had reassured him enough that he'd felt himself capable of making love to me without breaking me in half.

When I had told him that I wanted this human experience, I had hoped that he would acquiesce but had acknowledged that the likelihood of that happening was slim to none. His sudden agreement had taken me by surprise. I had not realised until that exact moment how much I'd wanted him – wanted us to express our love in this most tangible of ways, wanted to take this most natural of steps with him firmly by my side.

Now we had crossed that last frontier together. We lay, warm in our afterglow, with no barriers between us. There was no room for doubt, or insecurity, or fear. We had given ourselves to each other so utterly that all we could feel now was the purity of that love, flowing through an unbreakable connection.

I was glad, so glad, that Charlie had phoned earlier in the day to warn me that he wouldn't be home. It meant that neither of us had to move from Edward's bedroom. We did not have to separate, to sever ourselves from this perfect moment.

His hand cradled my head against the crook where his shoulder met his neck, his other hand still running up and down my back. Ì nuzzled the side of his neck with my nose, giggling when he purred softly in approval.

He caught my chin lightly between his thumb and index finger, tilting my head up to meet his. Smiling crookedly at me, he kissed the tip of my nose lightly.

"I have never –" He planted a kiss on my temple "— been so happy –" His lips fluttered delicately against the skin of my cheek, "– in my entire life," he finished simply, brushing his mouth across mine. "Thank you, Bella. Thank you."

I felt a stinging behind my eyes that had nothing to do with pain or fear or sadness. The love I had for this man was too much for my feeble body to contain. My heart felt as though it were beating right out of my chest, my throat ached, my every limb felt heavy with it – sore with it.

I kissed him. "I want to wake up like this every morning," I mumbled against his lips.

His hands stroked my face gently. "Me too," he whispered, and his whole heart was in his eyes.

I smiled adoringly at him. He looked and looked at me.

"I have to say, you've earned my full seal of approval with this human experience," he whispered playfully, kissing my forehead, his hands splaying around my waist, careful to avoid my injuries.

"I'm so glad the experiment was to your liking," I murmured back sarcastically, unable to keep the goofy smile off my face.

A thought skittered lightly across my head in that instance. I very nearly let it go, thinking it to be of little consequence, but my brain-mouth filter was not yet in place and so it slipped out without any volition on my part.

"Edward... is there anything _you_ want to experience with me while I'm still human?"

For the first time since I'd woken, his hands paused in their careful mapping of my body. His eyes watched mine warily.

"There is, isn't there?" I said instantly, the reactions of his body cluing me in.

He swallowed. "You won't like it," he said softly.

"Try me." I stroked his cheek.

"There is... one thing that I would very much like us both to experience," he mumbled. He looked so afraid, so unsure of himself. My heart ached. Did he not know that I would give him anything? That I would give him everything?

"What is it?" I asked quietly, bracing myself.

In a smooth movement, he raised his body, his arms cradling me against him so that I came to rest in his lap as he sat up.

"Bella, I love you," he vowed quietly to me, "and I want you in every way you can possibly imagine. I want you with me forever. I don't want a single day without you in it."

I smiled at him tenderly. "You know I feel the same way."

He took a breath and nodded. "I know.... I know you've already... already promised to love me always, to be with me forever..."

He sounded so hesitant. What was so difficult for him to say?

"And I was wondering..." He paused, his eyes searching mine, pleading for something... what? "I was wondering how you would feel if... If we promised that to each other in a more tangible way... A more official way... A mortal way. A – a marriage, Bella."

My mouth fell open.

Oh.

Oh, my god.

"You don't have to say anything right now," he said hurriedly, his hands stroking my hair. "It's just... It's a selfish desire, I know, I know you don't have any particularly happy memories of marriage considering your parents... It's just – I would love for you to wear my ring, to be my wife. I would love to marry you... to be your husband as well as your lover when I change you."

The room was dancing jigs around me. I couldn't believe what he was saying, couldn't believe that these words were actually falling from his lips. And I certainly couldn't work my brain or any specific motor functions. I could only stare at him dumbly, my mouth opening and closing like that of a goldfish.

"Bella?" he whispered anxiously, when a few silent minutes had passed. "Love? Have I upset you? I'm sorry, I don't mean to rush you into anything you're not ready for..."

I held a hand up, requesting quiet. He fell silent immediately, but still his eyes were troubled as they scanned my face again and again, looking for a clue to my thoughts.

My mind was utterly blank for minutes on end. I concentrated on breathing slowly, in and out, before finally my head cleared and I had one very important thought.

Edward Cullen loved me.

He wanted me to marry him. He wanted me to be his wife. He wanted to be my husband.

He wanted to keep me forever.

In that moment, all of my previously-held cynical views on marriage fell away and I saw right through to the very heart of it. And I recognised the bubble that I could feel building in and under my lungs, curling warmly throughout my entire body. In that second it burst, spreading bright rays of happiness through and through me.

A joyous laugh bubbled out of me, and I swayed towards his face. My arms locked tightly around his neck and my mouth was exultant upon his.

"Yes, yes, yes!" I was ecstatic, my voice bubbling between kisses, feeling the cool of his body around me, the warmth of his love.

He kissed me back fiercely, his hands tangled in my hair. "You mean it?" he gasped when my lips momentarily trailed down his neck. "You really mean it?"

I nodded fervently, taking his face between my hands and staring him in the eyes.

"Nothing on earth would make me happier than being your wife, Edward Cullen," I said softly, and went to kiss him.

He leant his head away from me, smiling radiantly.

"Say it again," he whispered blissfully.

I beamed at him. "I want to be your wife," I proclaimed, giggling in pure joy.

He swallowed. "Oh god," he said, and suddenly I was sitting all by myself on the couch with the blankets he'd covered me with the night before strewn haphazardly around me.

I looked to my right, and he was there, taking my hand in his, kneeling before me. The faint sunlight trickling in his window made prisms dance on his beautiful, naked flesh.

My breath caught in my chest as he opened his other hand, revealing a simple box. He pinched it open with thumb and forefinger, and there was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen, sparkling up at me.

"Marry me," he said simply.

I had to swallow the misty lump in my throat. "Yes," I whispered, almost bashfully, and watched as he slid the ring, the sign of his promise, into place on my left hand.

--

One Week Later

My truck's windscreen wipers slid back and forth across the window. I smiled as they screeched in angry friction against the glass, remembering the last time I'd been in this truck, the last time I'd been near this boundary line.

How much I'd changed since then. I was an entirely different person.

I pressed my foot to the brake pedal and we rolled smoothly to a stop.

"This is where we part ways for the moment," I told him softly. I felt, more than saw, him nod.

He picked up my hand and brushed a kiss across my engagement ring. "I'll be waiting," he promised.

I smiled at him. "I know you will be. I'll come back to you soon."

He slipped out of the truck and I continued on my way, towards La Push, towards my best friend's house, towards my past.

--

The last time I had been here, Jacob's enthusiasm at seeing me had swept me up into his arms without a moment's delay. Now, I made it as far as the door and had to knock before his large shape loomed from the house.

He came into view, and I had to suppress a gasp. His hair was tangled and matted, his face drawn so that he looked years older. It was obvious that he'd been through hell since I'd seen him last.

"Hi Bella," he croaked flatly, his voice rasping. I had to restrain myself from reaching out and hugging him. I held those impulses firmly in check – they would not help anyone, only hurt.

"Jake." I nodded my greeting at him, watching as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"What can I do for you?" he asked. There was no life in his voice, no hope.

I swallowed. "First and foremost, I came to apologise... and thank you," I whispered, my voice catching. "You... you were so right. I acted – deplorably. So much worse than I thought I could ever be capable of. And you saw right through me. You could have gone any number of ways and I wouldn't have blamed you... but you were the best friend I could have asked for in that moment, and I am so... so grateful for that."

He nodded. "Is that all?" he asked curtly. At that, I could no longer hold my worry in.

"Is something wrong?" I asked, as gently as I could. Again I ached to hold his body against my own, to comfort him, and again I resisted, knowing that no good could come of that.

"I'm fine, Bella," he said bitterly. "Well... maybe a bit on the crappy side of fine, but hey, I'll get over it, right? I'll just..." Here he broke off, seeming to give up. His shoulders slumped. "God," he cried, "why is this so hard? I thought it was bad not seeing you, but you being here, it's just..."

"Jake..."

Abruptly he took a deep breath and pulled himself up.

"It's okay," he said fiercely. "It's okay. You... you look really happy, Bells. And I'm glad for that. I really am."

I nodded bleakly, feeling my heart quail inside me as I remembered the task I'd come out here to achieve. As always, Jake noticed every minor urging of my body, and his face became more alert.

"That isn't the only reason why you came out here, is it Bella?" he asked sharply. "What's the matter? Are you in trouble? Do you need the pack's help?"

I shook my head, and took a deep, steadying breath.

"I only need one thing," I said, smiling shakily, "and you're the only one who can grant it to me."

His face had closed off again. He looked like a stranger. A grown up. For the first time, I saw him as a man and not a boy, saw him struggling under the weight of a very adult world.

I gulped. "I've come to you, Ephraim's heir, the true leader of the pack, to ask..."

"Stop right there," he said, his hands moving in a slicing motion. I froze, and saw his chest expand with a series of deep breaths.

"I know what you want, Bella," he said finally, quietly. "Just... just don't say it, okay? I can't bear to hear you say it."

I inclined my head gently, watching him warily, barely daring to breathe. I saw his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. Then his arms reached for me, pulled me to him, and his warmth surrounded me one last time.

"Do whatever you have to do to be happy, Bells," I heard him whisper throatily across the top of my head. "You have my permission. Just... just be happy, okay? Be happy, and be loved, that's all I want for you..."

My arms constricted around his back. This man, my best friend, who had picked me up and tried his hardest to put me back together, who had comforted me and held me and kissed me in the night, whose heart I had smashed to pieces, had just given me the very last thing he could ever give me, had gone against everything he believed in to ensure my future safety and happiness...

And then it was over. The hug was finished. Jacob's hands landed lightly on my shoulders, then gently pushed me back, away from his body.

"I can't be your best friend anymore," he said softly, his eyes all torn up. "You know that, right?"

I nodded. "I love you, Jake," I managed to choke out, and watched him smile wistfully.

The lips that I had once kissed glanced off my forehead, breathing me in for the last time.

"Goodbye, Bella," he murmured, then turned and walked blindly back into the house.

I stared after him, and my heart ached.

I knew, once and for all, that this chapter of my life was firmly closed. That I could never come back here, to this house, that I would probably never see Jacob again, never be a part of his future. The weight of that knowledge was hard to bear.

But endings, whatever their form, were always hard, always painful. This one was made even more bitter by the thought that Jacob would continue to suffer because of me, still wonder what might have been, until the moment the woman he was really meant to be with appeared in his life and made up for everything that had come before.

I realised now that I could still love Jake, still want the best for him, want him to be happy and safe and loved, but I had to let him go. He had been my best friend. Now was the time to finally be that to him, too. To walk away and not look back. It was what he needed. What he deserved.

I sighed heavily and made my way back to the truck. The clunk of the door as it closed echoed in my thoughts. I threw one more longing glance towards the house, towards the man who had played such an important role in my life.

"Be happy, Jacob Black," I murmured softly, blinking traitorous tears from my eyes.

Then my hand was twisting the key in the ignition, and the engine was roaring to life. My foot pushed the clutch, the truck rolled out of the driveway, and it was over. The past was behind me, and Edward was waiting.

Ever before I crossed the treaty line, I could see him, pacing anxiously in the rain at the edge of the woods.

I passed the invisible boundary, then put the truck in park, slid out and walked to him. His eyes burned into mine, yet all he said was "Is it finished?"

And I smiled back at him peacefully, slipping my arms around his neck. "Yes," I said simply, and raised my lips to his.

He kissed me firmly, with promises of more to come. And in that moment, I knew that there were more goodbyes in my future. That there would be tears and pain and heartache. I knew that I still had to explain things to my parents, to give them the best possible resolution, and that I had to mend the bridges I'd burned with his family during my weeks of selfishness.

There would be problems and obstacles ahead, just as there were problems and obstacles behind. But in that moment, we stood there in the rain, and my future husband held me as though he would never let me go, and I felt the bright promise of our life together beckon me one step closer.

And I knew.

I was exactly where I'd been meant to be, all along.

--


End file.
